Dominic Petronzi

Dr. Dominic Petronzi has worked on a range of projects within the area of maths anxiety. His research focuses on understanding the development of maths anxiety, how it relates to educational experiences/career trajectories, and approaches to reduce it.

Some examples of this work include exploring children’s (aged 4-7 years) attitudes and experiences of maths and triangulating this with insight from teachers and parents to develop the first maths anxiety rating scale (Children’s Maths Anxiety Scale UK; CMASUK) for children as early as 4 years of age. He has also conducted a review of interventions to address maths anxiety to provide an overview and recommendations and co-authored a chapter on recognising and measuring maths anxiety and resilience.

In line with this work, Dominic has authored and piloted a maths anxiety storybook approach to normalise maths talk in children and to support emotion regulation as a first step to countering maths anxiety. More recently, he has supervised projects that have explored the potential detrimental impact of maths schemes of work for UK trainee teachers and validated a therapy dog intervention for reducing maths anxiety.