Exploring adult learners’ relationship with mathematics: a mathematics life story approach

Abstract Of all academic subjects, mathematics tends to provoke strong emotional responses, especially negative ones, when individuals are asked to reflect on how they feel about mathematics. Adverse feelings about mathematics can materialize in different ways, from a dislike of mathematics to mathematics anxiety and avoidance of mathematics, and affect learners at all stages of education. In the context of adult education, life story research offers a comprehensive approach to eliciting significant mathematical experiences and the emotions tied to them. Uncovering past experiences with mathematics can help expose the factors that contribute to mathematics anxiety and avoidance. This understanding has direct implications for mathematics educators seeking to support adult learners more effectively. Building on a prior quantitative study that used the Mathematics Anxiety Scale U.K. (MAS-UK) to measure anxiety levels among adult learners in higher education—where results ranged from very low to considerably high mathematics anxiety—this paper introduces the Mathematics Life Story (MLS) Framework as a qualitative method to deepen understanding of those results. Specifically, the MLS Framework is used to trace the development of mathematical engagement across the life course of adult learners, highlighting pivotal events and circumstances that shaped their emotional and cognitive responses to mathematics. As a proof of concept, the MLS of one adult learner is presented, illustrating how the MLS Framework not only reveals the roots of mathematics anxiety but also sheds light on the learner’s evolving mathematical learner identity—how they see themselves as mathematics learners over time. The findings demonstrate that the MLS Framework provides a structured and comprehensive method of elucidating one’s life experiences with mathematics, thereby helping to uncover what impacted on their indicated level of mathematics anxiety and show how their engagement with mathematics has evolved over time.