Examining contextual influences on students’ emotional relationships with mathematics in the early years

While there is much written on students' emotions in learning mathematics, as yet, few studies have investigated students' experiences in the early grades (age: 4-9). Our research examining young students' mathematics autobiographies - first-hand accounts of the experience of learning mathematics - provides insight into how students' images of mathematics and their feelings about learning mathematics at this age are shaped by contextual influences. In this article, we particularly focus on the multiple contextual influences evident in such autobiographies, including parents' voices and the cultural norms associated with classroom practices. Our analysis reveals how students' prior and current experiences of early years' classroom practices and also their relationships with parents are drawn on in voicing images of, and emotional relationships with, mathematics. Through the use of mathematics autobiographies, including student drawings, this article adds to the existing body of literature on emotion and mathematics learning, by revealing young children's complex emotional relationships with mathematics.