Why Students Feel Bored and Confused in Math: Global Study Pinpoints the Emotional Drivers

Mathematics has long been the subject that students either love or dread, and a new international study suggests that the difference may lie less in raw ability than in a web of psychological and environmental factors that shape how children feel when they face a math problem. Researchers from Istanbul Aydin University analyzed data from the 2023 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, known as TIMSS, to identify what predicts two of the most common negative achievement emotions in mathematics classrooms: boredom and confusion, along with a general inclination to avoid mathematics learning altogether. Their findings, published in BMC Psychology, span three very different educational systems, Norway, South Africa, and Türkiye, and offer a rare cross-national window into the emotional side of mathematics learning.

The study is grounded in Control-Value Theory, a influential framework developed by psychologist Reinhard Pekrun that explains how achievement emotions arise from two fundamental appraisals. The first is control, a student’s perception of how well they can master a task, which depends on their confidence and their expectations of success or failure. The second is value, the subjective importance a student attaches to the activity and its outcomes. When perceived control is low and the activity is seen as important, students tend to experience anxiety and confusion. When control is high but the activity seems pointless, boredom tends to take over. The theory predicts that these appraisals are themselves shaped by individual characteristics, the home environment, and the classroom and school context, which is precisely the chain the researchers set out to test on an international scale.

The team focused on fifth-grade students, drawing on nationally representative samples from the three countries. Rather than treating emotions as continuous scores, the researchers used binary logistic regression models, a statistical approach that estimates the odds of a student falling into a high-negative-emotion group versus a lower one. Crucially, the analysis incorporated TIMSS sampling weights and jackknife repeated replication procedures, standard techniques in international large-scale assessment research that account for the complex sampling designs of these surveys and produce more accurate standard errors. The predictor variables included instructional clarity, meaning how clearly teachers explain lessons; digital self-efficacy, or students’ confidence in using technology for learning; sense of school belonging; home resources for learning, such as books and educational materials; and school emphasis on academic success. The researchers also tested exploratory interaction terms informed by the Control-Value framework, allowing them to examine whether the effect of one factor depended on the level of another.

The results reveal a striking pattern of both universality and cultural specificity. Some predictors operated similarly across all three countries, suggesting that certain psychological mechanisms transcend national boundaries. Others varied considerably depending on the educational context, underscoring that the emotional experience of learning mathematics is not produced by classroom factors alone but by the interplay between those factors and the surrounding sociocultural and systemic environment. This dual finding is perhaps the study’s most important contribution: it validates the core predictions of Control-Value Theory while cautioning against one-size-fits-all interpretations of how students’ emotions develop.

One of the most consistent findings concerned digital self-efficacy. Across the countries examined, students who felt confident in their ability to use digital tools for learning were frequently associated with lower levels of negative emotions in mathematics. This connection makes sense within the Control-Value framework: confidence in one’s capabilities, whether in handling technology or tackling mathematical content, feeds directly into the sense of control that the theory identifies as a cornerstone of positive emotional experience. In an era when digital learning tools have become embedded in mathematics instruction worldwide, the finding suggests that a student’s relationship with technology may quietly shape their emotional relationship with the subject itself.

Instructional clarity emerged as another powerful predictor, though with notable geographic variation. The association between clear teaching and reduced confusion was particularly strong in South Africa and Türkiye. Confusion, in the language of achievement emotions research, is not merely a momentary state of puzzlement; when persistent and unresolved, it can undermine engagement and push students toward avoidance. The finding implies that when teachers explain mathematical concepts in ways students can follow, they are doing more than transmitting content. They are actively managing the emotional climate of the classroom, reducing the uncertainty that breeds confusion and, by extension, the disengagement that often follows it.

The interaction effects uncovered in the study add a further layer of sophistication. Several significant interactions indicated that the relationship between contextual factors and students’ emotions was not fixed but contingent on other conditions. In practical terms, this means that a factor such as home resources for learning might matter more in one country or for one group of students than in another, or that the protective effect of school belonging could be amplified or diminished by other aspects of the environment. Such findings align with the Control-Value Theory’s insistence that emotions emerge from a dynamic system of appraisals embedded in social settings, rather than from any single variable acting in isolation.

For educators and policymakers, the implications are concrete. The authors point to the value of designing instructional environments that support students’ perceived control over mathematics learning, since environments associated with stronger feelings of control are also associated with lower levels of negative achievement emotions. That could mean clearer explanations, structured opportunities for students to experience competence, and attention to how confidently students can navigate the digital tools increasingly used in lessons. It could also mean recognizing that interventions must be tailored to context: a strategy that reduces boredom in Oslo may not translate directly to Johannesburg or Istanbul without adaptation to local conditions, resources, and cultural expectations around schooling.

The study also carries a broader message about how the education community measures success. International assessments such as TIMSS have traditionally emphasized achievement scores, but this research demonstrates that the emotional experiences accompanying those scores are themselves patterned, predictable, and consequential. Boredom and confusion are not background noise; they are signals of how students appraise their control over learning and the value they attach to it, and they influence engagement, persistence, and ultimately academic outcomes. By modeling these emotions with rigorous statistical methods across three countries, the researchers have helped move achievement emotions from the periphery of educational research toward its center.

The work, conducted by Umut Birkan Özkan, Yeşim Ozansak Topcu, and Buket Karadağ, was published as an open-access article in BMC Psychology on 25 September 2026, allowing researchers, teachers, and policymakers anywhere to examine the full analysis. As mathematics education systems worldwide grapple with persistent gaps in performance and engagement, the study offers a reminder that the path to better outcomes may run through the emotional lives of students as much as through curricula and tests. Understanding why a child feels bored or confused in a mathematics lesson, and which levers in the classroom, the home, and the school can shift those feelings, may prove to be one of the most practical questions education research can ask.

Subject of Research: Cross-national predictors of negative achievement emotions in mathematics among fifth-grade students based on Control-Value Theory

Article Title: Predictors of students’ negative achievement emotions in mathematics: a cross-national analysis based on Control-Value Theory

Article References: Özkan, U. B., Ozansak Topcu, Y., & Karadağ, B. (2026). Predictors of students’ negative achievement emotions in mathematics: a cross-national analysis based on Control-Value Theory. BMC Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05669-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05669-x

Keywords: Control-Value Theory, achievement emotions, mathematics education, TIMSS 2023, boredom, confusion, digital self-efficacy, instructional clarity, school belonging, cross-national comparison, logistic regression, educational psychology