Dr Dénes Szücs
Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology
University of Cambridge
Denes Szucs is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. He is deputy director of the Centre for Neuroscience in Education at the Department of Psychology at Cambridge and is an official fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. Szucs is Senior Fellow in the Science of Learning at UNESCO, United Nations, he has held various research grants from UK, European and USA funders. Szucs was the recipient of the James S McDonnell Foundation Scholar Award and was elected as Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (USA) and Academia Europaea (UK/EU). His research concerns mathematics development, mathematics anxiety, cognitive electro-physiology, the replicability of biomedical science and the misuse of statistics in biomedical science.
Keynote
Topic: Understanding Learning Anxiety and Students’ Self-Perceptions
Anxiety related to learning can significantly shape students’ academic experiences and long-term attitudes toward education. While mathematics has often been used to study this phenomenon — as many learners report fear and tension when engaging with it — the insights extend far beyond one subject.
Our large-scale research has shown that cognitive and emotional learning difficulties are distinct: many students struggle not because of ability, but because of learning-related anxiety and negative self-perceptions. Analysis of OECD data from more than 150,000 adolescents revealed that such anxiety is less linked to actual performance than to students’ expectations of success, their sense of control, and the value they place on the subject.
These findings suggest that students’ subjective self-beliefs — rather than objective difficulty — are key to understanding and improving learning engagement across disciplines. By recognising and managing these self-perceptions, teachers and school leaders can foster greater confidence, motivation, and resilience in learners, helping to prevent the long-term effects of learning anxiety in any subject area.