A scholarship of teaching and learning study of hospitality students’ attitudes toward and perceptions of math

ABSTRACT Some college professors may be concerned about students’ mathematics skills because they believe that their students lack the math skills required for career success and are anxious about math. For this Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) study, hospitality students were surveyed to explore their perceptions of and attitudes toward math. Findings indicated that students had higher math anxiety related to tests than to other math-related activities; their math test anxiety was related to their overall exam anxiety; if students perceived that they were good at math, they enjoyed math more, and the more students perceived that math was important to their careers, the more they enjoyed math; and the less students were anxious about math tests, the more they enjoyed math. Based on the findings, implications for teaching and learning are described, and ideas for future research are proposed.