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Mathematics under pressure: how mandatory math olympiads affect anxiety, competence, and self-concept

Michel Mix · Medellin, Colombia · May 17, 2026

Summary

This literature synthesis examines how mandatory participation in externally organized math olympiads may relate to math anxiety, perceived competence, and academic self-concept among students in the upper elementary grades. The core conclusion is nuanced: math olympiads are not inherently harmful and, under the right conditions, can instead challenge, motivate, and stimulate deeper mathematical thinking. The risk arises mainly when participation is mandatory, the problems go beyond the taught curriculum, the activity is structured around strong comparison, and students read their score as a judgment of their mathematical ability. In that situation, autonomy and perceived competence can come under pressure, allowing math anxiety, avoidance, and a more fragile math self-concept to reinforce one another. Parent process-oriented support can soften that experience by shifting the emphasis from score to strategy, effort, and shared thinking. At the same time, parental support is not a solution for problematic design: support at home differs across families and can actually make competition scores harder to interpret.

Key points

• Math olympiads are not a uniform educational tool: voluntary enrichment is pedagogically different from mandatory participation for an entire class.
• Competition can trigger both engagement and learning anxiety; the effect depends heavily on design, preparation, difficulty, and social comparison.
• A low score on a difficult external competition is not a clean measure of mathematical competence, especially when problems go beyond the taught level.
• Parent support helps most when it is process-oriented: thinking together, trying strategies, and normalizing mistakes.
• Home rounds can increase inequality and measurement noise when scores are used for selection, comparison, or school evaluation.

Positioning

This text is a literature synthesis, not an empirical study of one specific school or competition. The conclusion connects findings from research on competition, motivation, math anxiety, self-concept, parental support, and mathematics competitions as educational practice.

Research question

How does mandatory participation in externally organized math olympiads relate to math anxiety, perceived competence, and academic self-concept among students in the upper elementary grades, and what role does parent process-oriented support play in buffering these possible negative effects?

Literature synthesis

Introduction

Math olympiads have a double character in education. On the one hand, they can challenge students, make talent visible, and stimulate problem-solving thinking. On the other hand, they can also function as a strongly comparative testing environment in which students mainly experience that they fall short. That tension is central to this literature synthesis. The question is not whether math olympiads are good or bad in general, but under what conditions they become pedagogically stimulating or psychologically burdensome.

The research question focuses on a specific variant: mandatory participation in externally organized math olympiads for students in the upper elementary grades. That is an important distinction. Much of the literature on math olympiads treats competitions as enrichment for motivated, high-achieving, or selected students. In that setting, participation is often voluntary, there is preparation, and the challenge fits students who are specifically looking for greater mathematical complexity. The practical situation examined here is different: a broad student population must take part in an external competition, possibly with problems that go beyond the curriculum that has been taught. That changes the pedagogical meaning of the same activity.

A first conclusion from the literature is that there is little direct research on exactly this situation: mandatory, external math olympiads for a full population of elementary school students, including students who are not prepared for the content. The answer to the research question therefore has to be built cautiously from related lines of literature: research on classroom competition, math anxiety, academic self-concept, self-determination theory, parental support, and mathematics competitions as educational practice. That combination does not provide hard causal proof that a mandatory olympiad is always harmful. It does, however, make clear which mechanisms are likely to become active when competition, time pressure, social comparison, and difficult math tasks come together.

The core of the synthesis is as follows: mandatory participation in an external math olympiad mainly increases the risk of negative effects when the activity is experienced as a high-pressure test that undermines autonomy and perceived competence. Math anxiety, lower feelings of competence, and a more fragile mathematical self-concept can then reinforce one another. At the same time, the literature shows that competition is not inherently harmful. Competitive tasks can also evoke engagement, persistence, and enjoyment, especially when the challenge is attainable, collaboration remains possible, and the emphasis is on learning rather than ranking. Parent process-oriented support can soften the negative experience by reframing the activity as solving puzzles together, but that buffer is limited. Parents can also unintentionally transmit additional pressure, unequal help, or math anxiety.

Math olympiads are not a uniform pedagogical tool

The first step in the synthesis is to let go of the idea that "the math olympiad" is one fixed educational instrument. Falk de Losada and Taylor (2022) describe mathematics competitions as a broad landscape of practices: some competitions are highly selective and performance-oriented, while others are more focused on participation, problem solving, educational innovation, or collaboration. As a result, the same term can refer to very different learning experiences. A voluntary olympiad for students with strong mathematical interest is not pedagogically equivalent to a mandatory test for an entire class.

The Spanish-language and Colombian context sources show the same thing. Cano Nieto (2015) examines a team-based event for math olympiads in primary education, in which the competitive character is linked to collaboration and task design. Trincado Royo (2020) discusses olympiads mainly as a tool for students with high intellectual abilities. Puentes (2019) and Díaz-Pinzón (2020) place olympiad-like activities in a Colombian school context, emphasizing the strengthening of mathematical competencies. These sources are useful because they show that olympiads in education are not seen only as selection instruments, but also as didactic or enrichment activities.

At the same time, these sources limit their own usefulness for the research question. They mainly say something about designed, guided, or purpose-driven uses of olympiad tasks. The research question here is specifically about mandatory participation in an external competition for a broad population. That difference matters in substance. When participation is voluntary, the students who take part are mainly those who already feel interest, confidence, or support. When participation becomes mandatory, those selection conditions disappear. Students who do not want the competition, are not yet ready for the content, or are already insecure about mathematics are then placed in the same comparative structure anyway.

That is why it is better to analyze mathematics competitions through design features rather than through the label "olympiad." Four features are especially relevant here: voluntariness, difficulty level, social comparison, and support. A competition with voluntary participation, challenging but reachable problems, preparation, and process-oriented feedback can have a very different effect from a mandatory, timed test with above-curriculum problems and visible ranking. The positive olympiad literature therefore cannot simply be used as evidence that mandatory participation is pedagogically sound. Conversely, criticism of competition does not prove that every competition experience is harmful. The question is which psychological pathway the design is likely to activate.

Competition activates opposing motivational pathways

The literature on competition makes clear why simple conclusions fall short. Murayama and Elliot (2012) show in their meta-analysis that competition does not have a single, uniform main effect on performance. Their explanation is that competition activates opposing processes. Competition can evoke performance-approach goals: students want to show that they can do something, invest extra effort, and direct their attention toward success. But competition can also evoke avoidance goals: students mainly want not to embarrass themselves, not to lose, and not to be seen as weak. In that second pathway, competition becomes less of a challenge and more of a threat.

Li et al. (2022) connect directly to this in a study among primary school students. They found that classroom competition is not simply positively or negatively related to academic achievement. The relationship runs through multiple indirect pathways: competition can increase engagement, which supports achievement, but competition can also increase learning anxiety, which undermines achievement. They also found a chained pathway in which competition is associated with more learning anxiety, learning anxiety then with less engagement, and lower engagement with lower achievement. This is an important mechanism for the research question. A mandatory math competition can therefore evoke energy and engagement in some students, while the same situation activates anxiety, doubt, and withdrawal in others.

Fish et al. (2023) reinforce this nuance in an experimental study with young children. Competitive and collaborative mathematical game settings can support persistence and task attitudes. Their differential effect, however, did not go in the expected direction: not girls, but older boys performed less well in the competitive condition on tasks that required them to maintain attention to proportional relations despite distracting numerical cues. This finding therefore does not fit neatly into a story in which competition mainly harms vulnerable or insecure students. The value of the study lies more in the warning that competition can redirect children's attention, and that this depends on age, gender, task type, and social framing.

Cotton et al. (2013) also show that the effect of competition is sensitive to context, but their study has to be read more precisely than as a description of ordinary school competitions. It concerns a field experiment in elementary school classrooms in which children solved math tasks under competitive incentive structures, across multiple successive rounds. An initial advantage for boys disappeared in later rounds. The authors explain this not simply through acclimation, but through a combination of overperformance by lower-ability boys and underperformance by higher-ability girls in the first round; reducing time pressure also changed the pattern. For mandatory olympiads, that caution is especially relevant: an initial competitive score may say more about incentive structure, time pressure, and behavioral responses than about stable mathematical ability.

For the research question, the problem is therefore not competition as such, but especially individual, comparative, and mandatory competition without sufficient autonomy, collaboration, and process feedback. Tauer and Harackiewicz (2004) and Johnson and Johnson (2009) sharpen that design issue: competition and collaboration are not simple opposites. Collaboration can support intrinsic motivation, and intergroup competition can be motivating when students work together within a team. That fits the olympiad context of team-based tasks mentioned earlier.

The literature therefore points to a two-track model. Competition can become a challenge when students feel sufficiently competent, experience choice, and perceive the social environment as safe. Competition becomes a threat when students have little autonomy, expect to fail, or interpret their score as evidence of fixed mathematical ability. Mandatory participation mainly increases that second risk, because the student cannot first decide whether the challenge fits their interest and level.

Mandatory participation affects autonomy and perceived competence

Self-determination theory helps explain why obligation in this context is more than a practical organizational detail. Deci and Ryan (2000) argue that autonomy, competence, and relatedness are basic needs for high-quality motivation. Ryan and Deci (2000) distinguish here between intrinsic motivation, in which an activity is done for the sake of the activity itself, and extrinsic regulation, in which behavior is mainly driven by external pressure or reward. A mandatory external competition shifts the activity toward external regulation: students take part because they must, not because they chose the challenge themselves.

That shift does not always have to be problematic. School contains many mandatory activities, and students can also internalize mandatory tasks when they understand their value and feel sufficiently supported. The specific risk in a mandatory math olympiad lies in the combination of low autonomy and threatened perceived competence. When a student is required to participate in a test with many unsolvable or not-yet-taught problems, choice is not the only thing that is restricted. The student also repeatedly receives signals that they cannot handle the task. Within self-determination theory, that is a direct threat to the need for competence.

Pekrun et al. (2002) offer a complementary explanation from the perspective of academic emotions. Emotions such as anxiety are not merely side effects of learning, but influence attention, motivation, strategy use, self-regulation, and performance. A student who experiences a math task as uncontrollable or threatening will probably approach it differently from a student who sees the same task as challenging but manageable. The same problem can therefore be cognitively comparable while being processed very differently at the emotional level.

This is where the pedagogical core tension emerges. Math olympiads often use difficult, creative, or non-standard problems to make talent and problem-solving ability visible. For voluntary participants, that can be attractive. For mandatory participants, the same level of difficulty can send a message that was not pedagogically intended: "I cannot do this," "I am not good at math," or "math is for other children." Especially in the upper elementary grades, where students are still forming their academic self-concept, that interpretation is not neutral.

The literature therefore does not support a simple rejection of difficult mathematics problems. It does support the claim that difficult problems have to be embedded carefully. Without autonomy, preparation, and process feedback, the student can easily confuse the experience of challenge with the experience of incapacity. That is exactly the point at which an instrument intended to stimulate talent can turn into performance pressure.

Math anxiety, working memory, and performance reinforce one another

The second mechanism in the research question is math anxiety. The literature here is strong and broad. Dowker et al. (2016) show in their review that math anxiety has been studied for decades and is related to achievement, attitudes, and avoidance of mathematics. Carey et al. (2016) emphasize that the direction of the relationship between math anxiety and achievement is complex. Low achievement can increase anxiety, but anxiety can also undermine achievement. For many students, a reciprocal cycle is likely to emerge: difficulty with mathematics increases anxiety, anxiety disrupts learning and performance, and weaker performance then confirms the negative self-view.

Caviola et al. (2021) indicate that different forms of academic anxiety, including math anxiety and test anxiety, are related to mathematics performance. This meta-analysis is important because it does not reduce the pattern to one small study or one age group. At the same time, the practical interpretation remains cautious: anxiety does not explain everything, and the relationship is influenced by cognitive, social, and demographic factors. For the research question, this means that a mandatory competition does not automatically lead to worse performance, but it can become a risk factor when it activates anxiety.

The working-memory mechanism makes that risk concrete. Anxiety is burdensome because it occupies cognitive space that is needed for reasoning, keeping track of intermediate steps, and checking strategies. Ramirez et al. (2013) show this in young elementary school students: math anxiety is especially related to performance among children with relatively strong working memory, precisely because under pressure these children lose cognitive capacity that they would normally use productively. Justicia-Galiano et al. (2017) add that in children, math anxiety is related to performance not only through working memory, but also through math self-concept.

That mechanism is not limited to older students. Research in elementary school shows that mathematics performance is related to attention, inductive reasoning, working memory, and math anxiety (Pappas et al., 2019), that math anxiety and achievement become linked longitudinally at an early stage (Cargnelutti et al., 2017), and that math anxiety is also associated with basic skills among primary school students (Sorvo et al., 2017). In a Spanish primary school sample, Arnal-Palacián et al. (2022) further show that aspects of math anxiety, such as fear, restlessness, and blocking, can increase across primary education and differ by age and gender. This makes clear that math anxiety is not a problem that only appears in secondary education.

Taken together, these studies make the mandatory competition context vulnerable. A difficult external test requires a great deal of working memory, flexibility, and problem-solving ability. If the student is simultaneously preoccupied with failure, time, comparison, or parental or school expectations, those concerns compete with the cognitive space the task needs. The competition then measures not only mathematical ability or problem-solving potential, but also stress regulation, testing confidence, and familiarity with competition formats.

That also creates a validity problem. A low score on a mandatory olympiad can easily be read as evidence that a student has little mathematical talent. From the perspective of the literature, that is too simplistic. The score can also be influenced by anxiety, working-memory load, unfamiliarity with the problem types, lack of preparation, and the social meaning of the test. Especially when the problems are deliberately above the regular level, a low score is not automatically a clean indicator of mathematical competence.

Perceived competence and math self-concept are not secondary

In addition to math anxiety, the research question mentions perceived competence and academic self-concept. That is appropriate because anxiety and self-concept are closely linked in the literature. Jameson (2014) found among young children that math self-concept is a strong predictor of math anxiety. Students who see themselves as less capable therefore run a greater risk of experiencing math as threatening. In the other direction, anxious experiences can further damage self-concept.

Pérez-Fuentes et al. (2020) show in a study of self-efficacy, anxiety, and mathematics achievement that perceived competence and anxiety are both related to achievement. Although their study focuses on older students than the primary target group of this synthesis, the mechanism is relevant: students who feel competent approach mathematics differently from those who expect to fall short. The study fits self-determination theory, in which perceived competence is a basic condition for durable motivation.

Using TIMSS data, Mejía-Rodríguez et al. (2020) show that differences in math self-concept can already be visible early and, in many countries, differ by gender. This means that students do not enter a competition as neutral participants. They bring earlier experiences, expectations, and social messages with them. An external competition can confirm or correct those expectations. When a student with low confidence mainly encounters unsolvable problems, the competition is more likely to confirm the negative self-view than to challenge it.

Here too, the effect of competition is not uniform. A student may, through a difficult task, discover that puzzling, trying, and making mistakes are part of mathematics. But that requires a learning environment in which mistakes are not treated as proof of incapacity. In a mandatory competition with a score, ranking, or selection stage, that learning message is less self-evident. The institutional form then says: this is an assessment. The pedagogical intention may say: this is a challenge. For students, the language of assessment may weigh more heavily than the accompanying explanation.

In this synthesis, the term "academic self-concept" should therefore be read concretely above all as math self-concept and perceived competence. There is not enough direct evidence to claim that one mandatory math olympiad damages students' entire academic self-concept. There is, however, enough evidence to claim that repeated or emotionally intense experiences of mathematical failure can contribute to a more negative math self-concept, and that this self-concept is related to anxiety, motivation, and achievement.

Gender and the Colombian context require extra caution

Because Colombia is an important target context, that context deserves specific attention. Reali et al. (2016) examined the relationship between math anxiety and mathematics achievement among Colombian students aged 8 to 16, spanning both primary and secondary education. The source is therefore not focused purely on the upper elementary grades, but it is still relevant because part of the sample falls within the elementary-school age range. They found a negative relationship between math anxiety and achievement, with indications that this relationship may be stronger for girls. The study therefore shows that the core mechanism does not appear only in North American or European samples, but the mixed age range calls for cautious application to the specific target group of this synthesis.

Cárdenas et al. (2012) add another Colombia-relevant line. Their comparison of children in Colombia and Sweden shows that competitiveness and risk-taking among children can differ by culture and gender. The study is not about mandatory math olympiads, but it does make clear that competition cannot be separated from social context. What feels like play or challenge to one student can feel like risk or loss of face to another.

International research on gender, math anxiety, and self-concept supports this caution, although not all of the sources are close to the target group. Devine et al. (2012) studied British secondary school students and show that math anxiety and test anxiety are not the same thing, and that gender patterns can become visible when test anxiety is controlled. Van Mier et al. (2019) find among young students that the relationship between math anxiety and arithmetic performance can differ by gender and grade level. Stoet et al. (2016) use PISA data from 15-year-old students and show at the country level that parental valuing of mathematics and gender patterns can be intertwined with math anxiety. These sources differ in age group, measurement level, and context, but together they point to the same issue: students do not enter a competition as interchangeable psychological cases.

For mandatory participation, that means an "equal" competition does not automatically produce an equal experience. All students may receive the same problems, the same time, and the same scoring logic, but they differ in earlier mathematics experience, parental support, self-concept, language, testing confidence, gender expectations, and familiarity with olympiad-like problems. Those differences can matter even more in an external competition, because the school has less control over the meaning that students, parents, and organizers attach to the score.

The Colombian olympiad context is relevant here but still under-researched. Puentes (2019) and Díaz-Pinzón (2020) are useful for showing that olympiad-like activities in Colombian schools are used as a strategy to strengthen mathematical competencies. Correa Álvarez (2013) adds another contextual layer: in an analysis of olympiad results in Santander from 2009 to 2012, the difference did not lie in clear male or female superiority in scores, but mainly in participation differences and in factors such as school type and municipality. That source therefore mainly supports the relevance of gender-, school-, and place-based context in olympiad outcomes. None of these sources, however, provides strong evidence that mandatory, external participation is psychologically safe or effective for the entire population. The Colombian context therefore mainly supports the relevance of the question, not a definitive answer.

Parent process-oriented support can buffer

The research question asks not only about possible negative effects, but also about the role of parent process-oriented support. Here, self-determination theory again fits well. When parents emphasize thinking together, trying, discussing strategies, and normalizing mistakes, they can support the needs for relatedness and competence. The competition then becomes less of a judgment and more of a shared puzzle experience. In that context, even a difficult problem can gain pedagogical value, because the student experiences not knowing as a starting point rather than as a final conclusion about their own ability.

Hart et al. (2016) show, among parents of children aged 3 to 8, that the home math environment is related to reported mathematical skills. The age group is younger than the upper elementary grades, but the source is useful for distinguishing the type of home support involved. The home environment does not consist only of formal practice, but also of informal, spatial, and everyday math activities. For the research question, that matters because parent support does not have to be limited to explaining or demonstrating. Activities in which parents reason together, explore strategies out loud, and reduce the pressure of the correct answer may be especially helpful in allowing mathematics to be experienced as a thinking activity.

At the same time, the home environment does not automatically buffer. Casad et al. (2015) show among adolescents aged 11 to 14 that parent math anxiety and gender stereotypes can be related to children's outcomes, such as self-efficacy, attitudes, and educational intentions. The target group is older than the upper elementary grades, but the mechanism is relevant to the question of how parental tension and expectations can color the meaning of mathematics. Parents who feel tension around math themselves can unintentionally pass that tension on. Parents who focus strongly on scores can also intensify the competition context. The buffering effect of parents therefore depends not only on presence or involvement, but on the quality of that involvement.

Jameson (2014) nuances the role of contextual factors by showing that math self-concept in young children is strongly related to math anxiety. That means parent support probably helps most when it supports self-concept: "you can learn how to approach this" rather than "you need to score high." That wording also fits the literature on competition: a process-oriented interpretation reduces the chance that students will read a difficult competition as proof that they are not mathematical.

There is, however, a second side to parental involvement. When an initial phase of an external competition is completed at home, a validity problem emerges. The score then measures not only what the child can do independently, but also how much help, time, language support, digital skill, and mathematical knowledge are available at home. The literature on the home math environment makes clear that this home environment differs across families. Pedagogically, that is not necessarily a problem when the activity is intended as a shared learning experience. It does become a problem when the home score is used as a selection mechanism or as a comparison among students.

Parent process-oriented support can therefore be two things at once. At the child level, it can protect against anxiety and damage to self-concept. At the system level, it can increase inequality and measurement noise when home participation is part of a formal competition. That distinction is crucial. It is not fair to make parents responsible for repairing a poorly designed mandatory system. Parents can soften the experience, but they cannot fully neutralize the institutional message of mandatory evaluation.

Evidential strength of frequently cited sources

A final source-critical step is necessary because not all of the sources found or frequently cited carry the same evidential weight. Deci and Ryan (2000) provide a strong theoretical basis for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Li et al. (2022) is empirically relevant because it deals directly with competition, primary school students, learning anxiety, and engagement. These two sources can therefore carry a central role in the argument.

Boaler (2012) fits the topic as a practice-oriented warning about time pressure and math anxiety, but it is not a strong peer-reviewed empirical source. The central claim about time pressure is therefore better supported by the broader literature on math anxiety, test pressure, and working memory, such as Ramirez et al. (2013), Caviola et al. (2021), and Justicia-Galiano et al. (2017). At most, Boaler can serve as expert or practice context.

Kohn (1986, 1993) is relevant as a critical educational-philosophical voice against competition and reward structures, but caution is also needed here. Reitman (1998) criticizes Kohn's interpretation of reward and behavioral interventions. That does not mean Kohn's concerns about competition are unusable, but it does mean they should not be treated as the empirical foundation of the synthesis. The stronger route is to place Kohn's normative critique next to empirical research on competition, motivation, and anxiety. That makes the argument more defensible.

This source criticism makes the conclusion more precise. The literature does not support the hard claim that mandatory math olympiads are inherently traumatic. It does support the more delimited claim that mandatory, high-threshold, and comparative math olympiads create an elevated risk of math anxiety and lower feelings of competence, especially among students who experience little autonomy, preparation, or support.

Methodological limits of the current literature

A good synthesis also has to state what the literature cannot answer. The largest limitation is that few sources directly study mandatory external math olympiads in the upper elementary grades. Li et al. (2022) is about classroom competition, not external olympiads. Fish et al. (2023) studies competitive and collaborative game situations, not large-scale selection tests. Cotton et al. (2013) is about competitive math incentives in elementary classrooms, not existing external olympiads. The math-anxiety literature is strong, but it usually examines regular achievement, arithmetic tasks, or school contexts, not olympiads.

The conclusion is therefore inferential. The synthesis connects mechanisms that are well supported across different strands of literature, but it cannot pretend that there is direct causal evidence for the exact case. That is not a weakness of the research question, but it is a limitation for how conclusions should be phrased. Words such as "may," "increases the risk," and "probably especially when" fit better than categorical formulations such as "leads to" or "always causes."

A second limitation is that many studies are cross-sectional. Carey et al. (2016) show precisely that the direction between math anxiety and achievement is difficult to establish. Longitudinal studies such as Cargnelutti et al. (2017) are therefore valuable, but even they do not answer all questions about competition experiences. For the present research question, ideal research would follow students before, during, and after a mandatory competition, with measures of anxiety, perceived competence, achievement, parent support, and interpretation of the score. Such studies appear to be scarce in the literature reviewed.

A third limitation concerns culture and language. The Colombian sources are relevant, but fragmented. Reali et al. (2016) is strong for Colombian students and math anxiety, but not specific to olympiads and not limited to primary education. Puentes (2019), Correa Álvarez (2013), and Díaz-Pinzón (2020) bring the Colombian olympiad context closer, but provide weaker general evidence. That means the synthesis has to be cautious when translating international findings to Colombia. At the same time, precisely because of that limited local literature, it remains important to name the Colombian target context explicitly.

Answer to the research question

The literature suggests that mandatory participation in externally organized math olympiads becomes especially problematic when students experience the competition as an evaluative comparison they did not choose and for which they are not sufficiently prepared in terms of content. In that situation, three mechanisms come together.

First, obligation lowers autonomy. Within self-determination theory, that is not always harmful in itself, but it becomes vulnerable when students do not understand the value of the activity or when the task mainly evokes external pressure. Second, an overly difficult competition threatens perceived competence. When many problems are out of reach, the student may interpret the experience as failure rather than as challenge. Third, the combination of time pressure, score, and social comparison can activate math anxiety. That anxiety can burden working memory, disrupt task-focused attention, and reduce performance.

These mechanisms affect academic self-concept, especially math self-concept. The literature shows that math anxiety, self-concept, and achievement are mutually related. A mandatory competition therefore does not have to be only a temporary discomfort. If the experience is strong enough or repeated, it can contribute to a more stable belief that mathematics is "not for me." That risk is greater for students who are already insecure, feel little support, or are more sensitive to negative math messages because of gendered or contextual expectations.

At the same time, the answer is not that all competition should be avoided. Competitive mathematics activities can stimulate engagement and persistence when they are designed as an attainable challenge, when collaboration remains possible, when participation includes elements of choice, and when feedback is process-oriented. The tension therefore does not lie in mathematical challenge itself, but in the pedagogical framing of that challenge.

Parent process-oriented support can soften negative effects by changing the meaning of the competition. Parents can shift the emphasis from score to strategy, from winning to trying, and from failure to learning. In doing so, they support relatedness and perceived competence. But this buffer has limits. Parents can also pass on pressure or math anxiety, and differences in home support can make competition scores more unequal and less valid. Parent support is therefore a protective factor at the micro level, not a solution to problematic obligation at the system level.

The most defensible conclusion is therefore nuanced: mandatory external math olympiads are pedagogically risky when they are organized as selective, difficult, and comparative tests for all students. In that case, they can intensify math anxiety and lower feelings of competence, especially among students for whom the task is out of reach or who are already insecure about mathematics. The negative effects are not inevitable, but depend on design and guidance. Voluntariness, appropriate difficulty, preparation, collaboration, process feedback, and parental support can shift the activity from threat to challenge.

Implications for educational practice and future research

The next paragraph is not an additional layer of evidence, but a translation of the synthesis into possible choices for practice and future research.

For schools, this means that mandatory participation in an external math olympiad should be evaluated not only organizationally, but also pedagogically. The main question is not whether the competition is prestigious or can identify talent, but what experience the broad student population takes away from it. If most students mainly learn that they cannot do the problems, the educational value is questionable.

A first design principle is voluntariness, or at least meaningful choice. If full voluntariness is not possible, choice can still be built in by giving students different roles, levels, or task types. A second principle is preparation. Students should know that olympiad problems are different from regular classwork and that not solving everything is normal. A third principle is process-oriented evaluation. Scores can exist, but they should not be the main message for students who are not participating in a selection pathway. A fourth principle is collaboration. Team work or whole-class discussions can shift the competition from individual ranking to shared problem exploration.

For parents, the practical implication is that support should above all be process-oriented. Helping does not mean making sure the child gets a high score. It means reading calmly together, trying strategies, normalizing mistakes, allowing breaks, and making explicit that difficult problems are not the same as incompetence. At the same time, schools should be cautious with home rounds if those rounds count toward selection. In that case, parental help becomes a confounder: some students receive content support, emotional support, and practical support, while others do not.

For future research, a mixed-methods design would be appropriate. Quantitatively, researchers could measure how participation relates to math anxiety, perceived competence, self-concept, and achievement before and after the competition. Qualitatively, they could examine how students, parents, and teachers interpret the competition. That interpretation matters precisely because the same score may be seen by one student as a game and by another as proof of failure. For Colombia, research would be especially valuable if it includes local olympiad practices, language, school culture, and parental support.

Sources used and their role in the synthesis

The table below shows which sources carry the main argument and which sources were used mainly as context or source-critical nuance. Boaler and Kohn are mentioned only as source-critical context; the empirical support rests on peer-reviewed and methodologically stronger sources.

References

Arnal-Palacián, M., Arnal-Bailera, A., & Blanco, C. (2022). Ansiedad matemática en educación primaria durante el confinamiento por el COVID-19: influencia en la edad y el género. Acta Scientiae, 24(1), 145-170. https://doi.org/10.17648/acta.scientiae.6745

Boaler, J. (2012, July 3). Timed tests and the development of math anxiety. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-timed-tests-and-the-development-of-math-anxiety/2012/07

Cano Nieto, R. D. (2015). Diseño y análisis de una prueba de equipos de las olimpiadas matemáticas de Primaria. Universidad de Granada. http://hdl.handle.net/10481/40478

Cárdenas, J.-C., Dreber, A., von Essen, E., & Ranehill, E. (2012). Gender differences in competitiveness and risk taking: Comparing children in Colombia and Sweden. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 83(1), 11-23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2011.06.008

Carey, E., Hill, F., Devine, A., & Szücs, D. (2016). The chicken or the egg? The direction of the relationship between mathematics anxiety and mathematics performance. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, Article 1987. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01987

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AI disclosure

AI was used as support for structuring this literature synthesis, comparing sources, checking consistency between source use and argumentation, and refining wording. The substantive choices, source weighting, interpretation, final editing, and responsibility for the final text remain with the author.