Abstract

Most of us want our students to feel that mathematics is an enjoyable and rewarding study for them … but do we succeed? Some of our students are successful whereas others are anxious and fearful. The performance of Malaysian students in mathematics has been generally been not good. It has been realized that poor mathematics performance of students at the secondary level would result in a decrease in the number of students getting to the university. It was with this realization that the present project was mooted. This study is designed to investigate the effect of TI-84 Plus graphing calculator on the achievement of mathematics and the students’ anxiety. The sample of the study consists of four classes of form four students from two of the public schools in Selangor, Malaysia. In each school, one class was assigned to be the experimental group (N=54) and the other the control group (N=55). For the experimental group, all students used the graphing calculator. The treatment took about ten weeks. Regular teachers taught and used the graphing calculator. A paper and pencil test on the achievement and anxiety test developed by the researcher was given to both groups before and after the treatment. The result showed that there was a significant difference on the achievement and anxiety of the treatment groups (p < 0.01).