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5 Steps to Eliminate Math Anxiety – The Other Math

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5 Steps to Eliminate Math Anxiety – The Other Math

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When I meet someone new at a party and we exchange the customary small talk ("What about this weather?" or "How about those Giants?"), inevitably the question of what I do for a living comes up. Even before I share that I have been a middle school math teacher for 25 years, I can pretty much be certain that the response will be something along the lines of "Oh, math...I never understood algebra" or "I hated math in high school...my teacher was the worst". What a buzz kill.

It doesn't take much of a detective to figure out that ours is a nation filled with math phobics, or at least math-haters. There is plenty of evidence that babies do not come out of the womb hating math . So what happened between the time babies are born loving math and the time they become adults practically bragging that they can't do math? School.

School causes math anxiety. More accurately, the traditional instructional practices commonly used by math teachers - although it makes them highly regarded by their colleagues - are the very causes of the math anxiety experienced by our nation. I understand that there are other genuine causes of math anxiety that have nothing to do with schools, but for the purposes of this essay, I'll only focus on math anxiety that is the direct result of our sucky pedagogical practices in mathematics.

It doesn't have to be that way. Mathematics is an inherently interesting and and topic. So what can be done to keep our students thinking that is truly awesome? Here are my five steps for teaching math in a way that reduces the chance that students will develop math anxiety:

1. Eliminate timed tests

2. Provide students with a choice for assessing understanding

3. Let students invent their initial understanding of the mathematics

4. Teach multiple solution methods

5. Encourage lots of student collaboration

Let's take a brief look at each one.

It's bad enough that math has the reputation for being a black-and-white, right-or-wrong subject, but the practically religious zeal with which teachers use timed tests is about the worst thing we can do in a math classroom. We know that when children are put under math stress they are less able to correctly solve problems. Timed tests also give students the idea that mathematical success is somehow connected to speed rather than critical thinking.

It is true that the Common Core State Standards of Mathematics uses the word throughout the standards. Rather than using timed tests to teach (or measure) fluency, however, we should embed fluency building opportunities within number sense building activities. When students learn how to be flexible with numbers and quantities THIS is when fluency will naturally develop. Fluency, thus, can be developed in our students without causing fear and anxiety.

Provide students with a choice for assessing understanding

Since we know that students are less able to perform mathematical calculations when under stress, why do we continue to use stressful tests to measure student achievement? In a way, math tests are just longer versions of the timed tests that we already know are bad for students. Let's seek methods of assessing our students without causing fear and anxiety.

Start by assessing students formatively and informally on a daily basis. As students are working in class, the teacher should wander around the room noting which students are confidently and competently solving the problems, and then record that with a clipboard and checklist. Why should the teacher bother with a stressful test if she has already personally observed students successfully solving the problems?

If an actual assessment activity is necessary, we should provide students with a choice in how they demonstrate their understanding. Students who like taking tests can take one. Students who would prefer an alternative can demonstrate their understanding by

making a video with Educreations

performing a skit

standing at the whiteboard and solving problems

Giving students a voice in how they are assessed means students can choose the assessment method that they are the most comfortable with, thereby reducing math anxiety.

Let students invent their initial understanding of the mathematics

In a traditional classroom the teacher leads the discussion and shows students step-by-step how to solve the problem. Then students practice some problems in the classroom. Finally students go home to practice problems on their own. We in the ed biz call this the "gradual release" model.

This model of teaching leads students to believe that mathematics is not something discovered, but a fixed set of skills that is handed down from generation to generation. Since math is viewed as a fixed set of rules, a student who can't immediately come up with the proper solution method is left only with the assumption that he is incompetent.

Instead, we need to foster an environment where students see mathematics as the creative endeavor that it is. Students should be empowered to create their own solution method or algorithm when necessary. We know that invention activities lead to deeper understanding in mathematics. Therefore, prior to teaching a particular content, students should be given the opportunity to use their natural number sense to invent their own solution method prior to being taught the "official" method.

Teach multiple solution methods

I have observed many of my Algebra students get stuck on a math problem that could easily be solved arithmetically or by guess-and-check. When I ask why they didn't use one of the simple solution methods, students usually say that those are the "wrong" methods to use in an algebra class. Not only is math a bunch of rules, students also feel that there exists the added layer of complexity of using the "right" method.

As a direct result of #3, we need to teach students a variety of solution methods whenever possible. The very nature of mathematics is to find as many ways to solve a problem as possible. If this was not the case, the first time the Pythagorean Theorem was proven would have been enough for the mathematics community. Instead, the theorem has been proved over 300 different ways! We need to allow students to hunt for many different solution methods for a single problem, rather than forcing students to use one method to solve 30 problems. Students thrive when given the opportunity to re-create their own Pythagorean scenarios in class.

As students solve a single problem in multiple ways, they have the opportunity to compare and contrast the methods, see the connections between seeming unrelated methods, and develop a deeper understanding of the number sense that is inherent in that problem.

Encourage lots of student collaboration

Misery loves company? There's safety in numbers? Two heads are better than one? Whatever meme you want to use, students thrive when given the opportunity to work with one another. We know that student discourse improves achievement. Let students talk, so they can learn! Math anxiety will not rear its ugly head when to students are talking to one another in their own kid-friendly language. While students are collaborating, the teacher should be grazing around the room collecting formative assessment data: who is using which technique, who invented something novel, who is struggling, etc?

Collaboration only makes sense! Imagine The Beatles trying to learn how to be a band together without being allowed to talk with one another. That is exactly what we do in class! Students are seated in rows, often with seating charts specifically designed to discourage talking.

While it's no guarantee, my 25 years of experience says that implementing these five easy steps will go a long, long way towards preventing schools from causing math anxiety in our students! Reducing the math anxiety amongst our teachers...that's a story for another day.

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When I meet someone new at a party and we exchange the customary small talk ("What about this weather?" or "How about those Giants?"), inevitably the question of what I do for a living comes up. Even before I share that I have been a middle school math teacher for 25 years, I can pretty...

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How Much Math Anxiety Is Too Much? - Education Week

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How Much Math Anxiety Is Too Much? - Education Week

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If Levi Vaughan, a 5-year-old kindergartner in Braidwood, Ill., makes it through math class without a meltdown, it's a good day.

The transition to school has been tough in other ways for Levi, said Stefanie Vaughan, his mother, but math has been uniquely challenging.

"His math papers get pulled out and he's in full-blown crisis mode," Vaughan said. "He has to leave the class."

So Vaughan reached out to a friend, Molly Jameson, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Northern Colorado who studies math anxiety in young children.

In 2013, Jameson developed a scale to help measure math anxiety in the youngest students. Vaughan's hope is that the scale will help her and Levi's teachers understand how much of Levi's distress is specifically related to his anxiety about math.

Jameson is one of a number of researchers trying to gain a better understanding of math anxiety in children like Levi.

A growing body of research shows that many adults and older students have anxiety about math. But only in recent years have researchers been looking to early childhood to understand the roots of the problem and how it is entangled with math performance and other psychological challenges.

"It's unclear in the literature if people who have low knowledge develop anxiety-in which case, they need skills-or if a low feeling of confidence leads to lack of knowledge." Jameson said. She said that understanding math anxiety could help teachers identify how and where to intervene when students are struggling.

And, she said, it's important to intervene early. For instance, adult women cite higher levels of anxiety in math than adult men, and women are also less likely to hold jobs in many science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or STEM, fields-but women who stay in STEM fields are less likely to report math anxiety, Jameson said.

"I think a lot of it starts in early elementary school," she added.

Measuring Math Anxiety

"We're consistently seeing we have a decent number of kids with math anxiety by 4th or 5th grades," said Colleen Ganley, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, "but we don't know when it starts, how it develops, what's happening before that, and how do they get there."

A first step is determining how to measure how math-anxious young students are in the first place. But the scales used to measure anxiety in adults aren't always appropriate for young children, and there is no single scale used by most researchers.

In her Children's Anxiety in Math Scale, Jameson uses a series of faces-a smiling face indicates a lack of anxiety, while a frowning face is associated with anxiety. Her scale has been used by researchers in the Philippines and Turkey, as well as the United States.

Ganley developed a different scale for her research that asks students to answer questions about their relationship with math on a scale of "yes, kind of, not really, and no."

Ganley said that while some early research indicates that adults can self-identify as math anxious, a 1st grader is not likely to be familiar with the word anxiety-or with some of the physical symptoms associated with it.

She said that some surveys ask if a child feels butterflies in his or her stomach in math class. But one child she surveyed said he felt butterflies because he loved math so much, and another associated that feeling with hunger.

Ganley said that on her scale, students are answering that they are anxious about math as early as 1st grade.

A Complex Link

Julianne Herts and Alana Foley, both researchers at the University of Chicago, recently published a paper showing that math anxiety can be present even in students who excel at math-and that anxiety can significantly impede their performance in the subject.

But that work focused on older students. Some researchers are beginning to look at how adults' attitudes and dispositions affect children.

Herts said that teachers' attitudes seem to matter, and that early-education majors "tend to be very math-anxious as a group." Parents' attitudes also seem to have an impact: In 2015, Sian Bielock, a professor at the University of Chicago, found that parental anxiety about math was tied to math anxiety among children. That effect can start early, even before school.

That finding lines up with Stefanie Vaughan's experience. Vaughan said she struggled with math in school, and the difficulty is now compounded because Illinois' math standards are "a different approach than what I grew up with."

Still others are beginning to look at how to address math anxiety.

Last year, for instance, a team of researchers led by Vinod Menon, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, found that working with a tutor seemed to improve 3rd graders' performance in math and reduce their anxiety.

The University of Chicago's Foley said that there's room for more research on what's happening in the earliest grades. "Anxiety and performance are correlated, and in adults it tends to be bidirectional," Foley said. "In children, we have the opportunity to ... tease out casual relationships."

The University of Northern Colorado's Jameson said she could imagine individual school psychologists or teachers using the math-anxiety scale to understand when a student's math struggles were related to emotions or to determine how an entire class was feeling about math.

"Is it a lack of motivation or knowledge or an emotional block?" she said.

But the University of Chicago's Herts said that even as more researchers develop tools to identify math anxiety, she would caution against overidentifying students as having math anxiety, because that could potentially foster even more wariness about the subject.

Meanwhile, Vaughan, the Illinois mother, hopes the research eventually translates into more-tangible approaches to helping children like Levi, who loves science and other subjects.

"I hope he wouldn't feel immediately defeated when he sees math and just shuts down," she said. "I'd hope he would be able to realize that it might be tough, but to keep working and you'll get through."

Published in Print: May 17, 2017, as Researchers Develop Scales to Measure Students' Math Anxiety

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If Levi Vaughan, a 5-year-old kindergartner in Braidwood, Ill., makes it through math class without a meltdown, it's a good day. The transition to school has been tough in other ways for Levi, said Stefanie Vaughan, his mother, but math has been uniquely challenging.

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Timed Tests and the Development of Math Anxiety - Education Week

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Timed Tests and the Development of Math Anxiety - Education Week

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Commentary

Research links 'torturous' timed testing to underachievement in math

Mathematics education is in crisis: A third of all schoolchildren end up in remedial math courses, and the level of interest in the subject is at an all-time low. This is a result, in part, of schools in the United States heading down a fast-moving track in which the purpose of math has been reduced to the ranking of children and their schools. Math has become a performance subject. Children of all ages are more likely to tell you that the reason for learning math is to show whether they "get it" instead of whether they appreciate the beauty of the subject or the way it piques their interest. The damage starts early in this country, with school districts requiring young children to take timed math tests from the age of 5. This is despite research that has shown that timed tests are the direct cause of the early onset of math anxiety.

Timed math tests have been popular in the United States for years. Unfortunately, some of the wording in the Common Core State Standards may point to an increased use of timed tests. From the 2nd grade on, the common standards give math "fluency" as a goal. Many test writers, teachers, and administrators erroneously equate fluency with timed testing.

It is critical that we take a moment to review the emerging evidence on the impact of timed testing and the ways in which it transforms children's brains, leading to an inevitable path of math anxiety and low math achievement.

The personal and educational consequences of math anxiety are great. Math anxiety affects about 50 percent of the U.S. population and more women than men. Researchers know that math anxiety starts early. They have documented it in students as young as 5, and that early anxiety snowballs, leading to math difficulties and avoidance that only get worse as children get older. Researchers also know that it is not related to overall intelligence.

Until recently, we have not known the causes of math anxiety and how it affects the brain, but the introduction of brain-imaging research has given us new and important evidence. Sian Beilock, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, for example, has found that when children are put under math stress, they are unable to execute math problems successfully. The stress impedes their working memory-the area of the brain where we hold math facts. Beilock found that stressful math situations cause worries that compete for the working memory, causing it to be blocked. She also found that math anxiety has an impact on those with high, rather than low amounts of working memory-the very students who have the potential to take mathematics to higher levels.

In Beilock's recent research conducted with children in 1st and 2nd grade, she found that levels of math anxiety did not correlate with grade level, reading level, or parental income. For the most capable students, the research confirms, stress impedes the functioning of their working memory and reduces achievement. Research conducted at Stanford revealed that math anxiety changes the structure and workings of the brain.

When I moved to the United States from Europe a few years ago, I was shocked to learn that many school districts give children, as early as 1st grade, 50 math problems to solve in three minutes. For many students, it is not an exaggeration to describe this experience as torturous. When teachers of 2nd and 4th graders in one elementary school I visited asked students to write down how the test made them feel, responses showed that the test prompted anxiety in one-quarter of the students in each class, but that anxiety was not correlated with test success. Indeed, some of the students with the highest levels of success were those who indicated the greatest anxiety and made comments such as "I feel nervous. I know my facts, but this just scares me."

It should not come as a surprise that the highest achievers displayed the greatest anxiety; in fact, neuroscience tells us that these students experience the greatest degree of cognitive dysfunction. But this anxiety does not only affect high-achieving students. Second graders from across the achievement spectrum described the tests as making them feel "upset" and "unhappy" and that they are "terrible at math."

Timed tests have been given to young children in school districts in the United States with the best intentions, but with negative consequences for many years. The brain research that has emerged recently could be the impetus for shifting the momentum. But the inclusion of the word "fluency" in the common standards may mean that educators will continue to use these tests, and that they will even be included as part of the new common-core assessments.

There are many good teaching strategies for encouraging fluency in math, but the ones that are effective are those that simultaneously develop number sense-the flexible use and understanding of numbers and quantities-without instilling fear and anxiety. Strategies that involve reasoning about numbers and operations, such as the pedagogical approach called "number talks," are ideal for developing fluency with understanding.

Beyond the fear and anxiety, timed tests also convey strong and negative messages about math, suggesting that math ability is measured by working quickly, rather than thinking deeply and carefully-the hallmark of high-level mathematical thinking. The ideas students develop about math in elementary school are critical for their future in the subject.

Policies in education rarely draw from research knowledge. But I would argue that this particular policy-of giving young children timed math tests-is one of the clearest ways schools damage children, and we now have evidence of the extent of the damage.

The United States faces a serious problem with widespread underachievement in mathematics, and insufficient numbers of students available to continue mathematical, scientific, and technological innovations. Educators and policymakers share an important goal: to create math classrooms where students are excited to learn the subject, rather than being stressed and worried about their performance under pressure. There is no disagreement about the goal, but policies that require the testing of young children under timed conditions may be inadvertently achieving the opposite. Assessments for the common core could break or perpetuate this cycle of damage. Let's hope they do the former.

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Timed Tests and the Development of Math Anxiety

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Commentary Mathematics education is in crisis: A third of all schoolchildren end up in remedial math courses, and the level of interest in the subject is at an all-time low. This is a result, in part, of schools in the United States heading down a fast-moving track in which the purpose of math has been reduced to the ranking of children and their schools.

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Stop telling kids you’re bad at math. You are spreading math anxiety ‘like a virus.’ - The Washington Post

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Stop telling kids you’re bad at math. You are spreading math anxiety ‘like a virus.’ - The Washington Post

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When I read the following post, I was chagrined to see myself in it. Are you? Here's why you need to change your tune. This was written by Petra Bonfert-Taylor, a professor of engineering at Dartmouth College and a 2016 Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project, a non-profit working to increase the range of public voices and ideas.

By Petra Bonfert-Taylor

"How was skiing?" I asked my 14-year old daughter as she hauled her boot bag into the car. "Well, the ratio of snow to ground was definitely low," she replied, adding that she had tried to figure the ratio of snow-to-ground during practice but had received only mystified looks. "Stop the math!" demanded a coach. "You are confusing us!"

Why do smart people enjoy saying that they are bad at math? Few people would consider proudly announcing that they are bad at writing or reading. Our country's communal math hatred may seem rather innocuous, but a more critical factor is at stake: we are passing on from generation to generation the phobia for mathematics and with that are priming our children for mathematical anxiety. As a result, too many of us have lost the ability to examine a real-world problem, translate it into numbers, solve the problem and interpret the solution.

Mathematics surrounds us, yet we have become accustomed to avoiding numerical thinking at all costs. There is no doubt that bad high school teaching and confusing textbooks are partly to blame. But a more pernicious habit does the most damage. We are perpetuating damaging myths by telling ourselves a few untruths: math is inherently hard, only geniuses understand it, we never liked math in the first place and nobody needs math anyway.

Often adults are well-meaning when telling children about their own math phobia: after all, won't it make the children feel better if they know that others feel that way as well? Research shows the answer is a resounding "no."

Anxiety over mathematics has been recognized as a grade killer. The National Mathematics Advisory Panel of the U.S. Department of Education has found that anxious students perform lower than their abilities. What's more, there is growing evidence that mathematical anxiety can be passed on like a virus from teachers to students as well as from parents to children.

Girls are especially affected when a teacher publicly announces math hatred before she picks up the chalk. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that female - but not male - mathematical achievement was diminished in response to a female teacher's mathematical anxiety. The effect was correlated: the higher a teacher's anxiety, the lower the scores.

Parents' mathematical anxiety can have a similar effect on their children. Researchers observed that children who received math homework help from mathematically fearful parents showed weaker math achievements than their peers, which in turn resulted in increased math anxiety for the children themselves.

What we need to do instead is encourage our children to persevere. In France, for example, math skills are appreciated and it is quite cool to be good at math. Teaching - especially math teaching - is a highly respected and well-paid profession, even at the preschool level and children there are trained early to appreciate the art of mathematics.

Working on mathematical skills is not unlike practicing a sport: neither can be learned by watching others perform the activity and both require encouragement and effort. In the words of Michael Jordan: "I've missed 3,000 shots. Twenty-six times the game-winning shot has been trusted to me, and I've missed. I've lost over 300 games. I've failed over and over and over again, and that is why I've succeeded." (Notice the math in that statement?)

You do not need an innate mathematical ability in order to solve mathematical problems. Rather, what is required is perseverance, a willingness to take risks and feeling safe to make mistakes. The next time you help a student with homework, try to repress the "I hate math" instinct, which is even worse than making a few flubs.

Instead try to have fun and give reassurance that perseverance will yield results. Numbers are always simple, clean and beautiful - and nothing to be afraid of.

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Stop telling kids you're bad at math. You are spreading math anxiety 'like a virus.'

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When I read the following post, I was chagrined to see myself in it. Are you? Here's why you need to change your tune. This was written by Petra Bonfert-Taylor, a professor of engineering at Dartmouth College and a 2016 Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project, a non-profit working to increase the range of public voices and ideas.

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Why Kids Take On Adults’ Math Anxiety | MindShift | KQED News

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Why Kids Take On Adults’ Math Anxiety | MindShift | KQED News

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We know a lot about how relationships can enhance learning. We learn better when we "apprentice" ourselves to someone more knowledgeable, for example; when we ourselves teach others; and when we discuss and debate with our peers.

But there are also times when relationships suppress learning. This is the case when parents and teachers-figures of towering importance in the world of children-pass on negative views about particular academic subjects. This passing-on is not deliberate, of course. No parent or teacher would wish to impart feelings of anxiety or aversion regarding learning. And yet that's often just what happens, according to Elizabeth Gunderson, a researcher at the University of Chicago.

Gunderson and her colleagues recently published an article in the journal Sex Roles that examined the "adult-to-child transmission" of attitudes about learning-in particular, how mothers' unease with mathematics may be passed down to their daughters. Parents' "own personal feelings about math are likely to influence the messages they convey about math to their children," Gunderson notes-and kids will readily recognize if these feelings are negative. Becoming aware of our anxiety is the first step toward stopping such transmission in its tracks.

The more anxious teachers were about math, the more likely the girls in their classes were to endorse negative stereotypes about females' math ability.

Previous studies have looked at how parents' stereotypes ("boys are better at math, and girls are better at reading") and expectations (for example, holding sons' academic performance to a higher standard than daughters') affect their children's orientation toward learning. Gunderson takes a different tack, suggesting that parents may influence their offspring's attitudes in two more subtle ways: through their own anxiety, and through their own belief that abilities are fixed and can't be improved (expressed in commonly-heard comments like "I've never been good at science," and "I can't do math to save my life").

Research shows that school-aged children are especially apt to emulate the attitudes and behaviors of the same-sex parent-a source of concern if we want to improve girls' still-lagging performance in traditionally male-dominated fields like science and mathematics. If mom hates math, a young girl may reason, it's O.K. for me to dislike it too.

[RELATED: Girls and Math: Busting the Stereotype]

Teachers aren't immune to negative feelings about learning, either. In fact, studies show that undergraduates who study elementary education have the highest math anxiety of any college major. Instructors who are uncomfortable with mathematics feel less capable teaching the subject, research indicates, and are less motivated to try new and innovative teaching strategies. A study by cognitive psychologist Sian Beilock, published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science in 2010, demonstrates how teachers' unease with math can influence the students in their classrooms.

Beilock and her coauthors evaluated 52 boys and 65 girls enrolled in first and second grade and taught by 17 different teachers. At the beginning of the school year, there was no connection between the students' math ability and their teachers' math anxiety. By the end of the year, however, a dismaying relationship had emerged: the more anxious teachers were about math, the more likely the girls in their classes were to endorse negative stereotypes about females' math ability, and the more poorly these girls did on a test of math achievement.

Adults who want to avoid passing on pessimistic attitudes about learning can do more than simply watch their language (no more "I'm hopeless at math" when the dinner check arrives at the table). They can jump into the subject they once feared with both feet, using their children's education as an opportunity to brush up on their own basic skills. Learn along with your kids, and you may find that math and science, or writing and spelling, are not so scary. And let kids know that it's always possible to change and improve our abilities-you being a prime example.

Why Kids Take On Adults' Math Anxiety

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We know a lot about how relationships can enhance learning. We learn better when we "apprentice" ourselves to someone more knowledgeable, for example; when we ourselves teach others; and when we discuss and debate with our peers. But there are also times when relationships suppress learning.

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Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement

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Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement

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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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Department of Psychology and Committee on Education, University of Chicago, IL 60607

Edited* by Edward E. Smith, Columbia University, New York, NY, and approved December 17, 2009 (received for review September 23, 2009)

Abstract

People's fear and anxiety about doing math-over and above actual math ability-can be an impediment to their math achievement. We show that when the math-anxious individuals are female elementary school teachers, their math anxiety carries negative consequences for the math achievement of their female students. Early elementary school teachers in the United States are almost exclusively female (>90%), and we provide evidence that these female teachers' anxieties relate to girls' math achievement via girls' beliefs about who is good at math. First- and second-grade female teachers completed measures of math anxiety. The math achievement of the students in these teachers' classrooms was also assessed. There was no relation between a teacher's math anxiety and her students' math achievement at the beginning of the school year. By the school year's end, however, the more anxious teachers were about math, the more likely girls (but not boys) were to endorse the commonly held stereotype that "boys are good at math, and girls are good at reading" and the lower these girls' math achievement. Indeed, by the end of the school year, girls who endorsed this stereotype had significantly worse math achievement than girls who did not and than boys overall. In early elementary school, where the teachers are almost all female, teachers' math anxiety carries consequences for girls' math achievement by influencing girls' beliefs about who is good at math.

Footnotes

¹To whom correspondence should be addressed at: Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, 5848 South University Avenue, Chicago, IL 60607. E-mail: beilock{at}uchicago.edu .

Author contributions: S.L.B., E.A.G., G.R., and S.C.L. designed research; E.A.G. and G.R. performed research; S.L.B. and E.A.G. analyzed data; and S.L.B., E.A.G., G.R., and S.C.L. wrote the paper.

↵*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0910967107/DCSupplemental.

Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.

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Female teachers' math anxiety affects girls' math achievement

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Department of Psychology and Committee on Education, University of Chicago, IL 60607 Edited* by Edward E. Smith, Columbia University, New York, NY, and approved December 17, 2009 (received for review September 23, 2009) People's fear and anxiety about doing math-over and above actual math ability-can be an impediment to their math achievement.

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Square Root of Kids’ Math Anxiety: Their Parents’ Help - Math Tutor Singapore

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Square Root of Kids’ Math Anxiety: Their Parents’ Help - Math Tutor Singapore

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Jan Hoffman wrote an article on results of a new study stating math anxiety is contagious between parent and child. And the irony? This is transmitted via homework assistance.

Children of highly math-anxious parents learned less math and were more likely to develop math anxiety themselves. This is enhanced when their parents provided frequent help on math homework, according to a study of first- and second-graders, published in Psychological Science.

Researchers tested 438 children from 29 public and private schools in three Midwestern states for math ability as well as math anxiety, at the beginning and end of the school year. Their parents completed questionnaires about math anxiety, and about how often they helped their children with homework.

So much for good intentions. The more the math-anxious parents tried to work with their children, the worse their children did in math, slipping more than a third of a grade level behind their peers. And the children's weaker math achievements increased their nascent math anxiety.

"The parents are not out to sabotage their kids," said Sian L. Beilock, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Chicago. "But we have to ensure their input is productive. They need to have an awareness of their own math anxiety and that what you say is important."

For example, she said, comforting a homework-distressed child, by saying, " 'I'm not a math person either, and that's O.K.,' is not a good message to convey."

The research results come as no surprise to Jennifer Hare, who has a third grader and a sixth grader, and two more on the school runway. In college, Mrs. Hare, a daughter of math-anxious parents, switched majors just to avoid required math courses.

An exhausted soccer mom, she is still determined to help her math-challenged, math-anxious children. To hide her grimaces as she stares at quasi-algebraic word problems, she holds a piece of paper in front of her face. That does not fool them at all - maybe because she says she sometimes bursts out: "'What are these teachers thinking? Are they nuts?'"

Math anxiety feeds upon itself

Mark H. Ashcraft, an expert on math anxiety at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said, "On challenging math problems that require a lot of working memory, math-anxious people fall apart. Their working memory is consumed by worry and anxiety, and they don't have enough left over to do the math."

Many adults identify secondary school algebra as the onset of math anxiety. Research has shown that it can begin earlier. But the effect of math-anxious, homework-helping parents is a newly discovered factor.

Parental math anxiety is exacerbated whenever schools introduce new methods of learning math, said Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, who has studied the effects of homework.

A small comfort: The homework-helping, math-anxious parents did not have a negative effect on their children's reading ability, the new study said.

How can math-anxious parents help their children at math? Dr. Cooper suggests that parents of young children create a math-positive environment by modelling "math behaviour." The game plan: Tell your child, "'You have your math homework, and I have mine,'" he said, and show them whenever you "count your change, calculate when dinner will be ready, look at prices in a grocery store."

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Square Root of Kids' Math Anxiety: Their Parents' Help - Math Tutor Singapore

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Jan Hoffman wrote an article on results of a new study stating math anxiety is contagious between parent and child. And the irony? This is transmitted via homework assistance. Children of highly math-anxious parents learned less math and were more likely to develop math anxiety themselves.

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Infinite Insights Episode 5 – Math Anxiety and Timed Tests – The Other Math

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Infinite Insights Episode 5 – Math Anxiety and Timed Tests – The Other Math

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It is hard to imagine that in this day and age - with all the new brain research, neuroscience, sophisticated studies at hand - that we still have to convince people that math anxiety is a real thing. This reminds me of a true medical story:

In 1980 an Australian doctor[1] discovered that (and proved overwhelmingly) that ulcers were not caused by excess acid in the stomach - as had been thought for the previous 100 years - but were caused by the bacteria H. Pylori. This meant that for the first time in the history of the world ulcers were no longer an incurable lifetime condition, but were easily cured with a week of antibiotics. Ten years later only 1% of doctors had given up the old way of treating ulcers (bland food, milk, etc) in favor of antibiotics!

Ten years!

What an incredible shame for the ulcer patients who did not get proper treatment simply because their doctors refused to give up the old way of thinking.

The math community is in a similar situation regarding math anxiety. We now know what it is. We know its causes. And yet we continue with the old way of thinking!
What is Math Anxiety and where does it come from?
It is not entirely clear what comes first - the chicken or the egg? Does math anxiety cause poor math performance? Or does poor math performance lead to math anxiety? There are three theories[2] on the relationship between the two: deficit theory, debilitating/anxiety model, and the reciprocal theory.

1. In the deficit theory, a student begins with some sort of poor performance in mathematics - a quiz, time test, embarassing wrong answer - and these memories generate the feeling of math anxiety.

2. In the debilitating/anxiety model, a student develops high math anxiety from the surrounding environment, which then reduces performance by causing avoidance of math-related activities.

3. The third model is the reciprocal theory, which is a bit of a hybrid of the first two. In this theory math anxiety and poor math performance for a negative feedback loop that continues to elevate the math anxiety and reduce the math performance.

Though we are not entirely certain which comes first, we know that math anxiety comes from stress. Brain-imaging technology has provided great insight into how math anxiety affects the brain. Studies have shown that when children are put under stress, they are unable to execute math problems successfully. The stress inhibits the working memory - the area of the brain where math facts are held. Stressful math situations cause worries and stress. The math and the worrying then compete for the same working memory. Math anxiety even impacts students with high amounts of working memory - students who typically might do well in math class.

Other things about math anxiety that we know:

Math anxiety appears to affect a significant proportion of school and university students at all ages, as well as adults; girls report it more than boys

Math anxiety affects working memory; addressing the anxiety and providing strategies to control it may be effective

Math anxiety affects about 50 percent of the U.S. population and more women than men.

What are the effects of math Anxiety?
As previously mentioned, the physical effects of math anxiety are undeniable thanks for MRI scanning. The amygdala is responsible for emotions, emotional behavior, and motivation. Ashcraft and Krause (2007) found that math anxiety severely impacts student's ability to enjoy math, motivation to take more math or do well in math.

When a student suffers from math anxiety a typical response is "it is just in the student's head". While is is in the student's head, it is now clear that it is physical. The amygdala is being impacted. The cure will need to be more than just hand-waving and hoping the student outgrows it.
Where does it come from?
There are five major contributors to the stress/math anxiety/poor math performance cycle: parents, teachers, society, a focus on speed, and poor teaching.

PARENTS[3]

Jan Hoffman wrote an article on results of a new study stating math anxiety is contagious between parent and child. Here is her surprising conclusion: Math anxiety is transmitted during homework time at home. The more parents help with mathematics, the more likely math anxiety is transmitted from the parent to the child.

We all have heard adults practically brag about how bad they are with math or how much they hate the subject. Many of those adults identify algebra as the onset of their math anxiety, although much research has shown that it can begin earlier. Regardless of when the onset of math anxiety is, when those math-anxious adults become homework-helping parents, math anxiety is transmitted to the child[4] like a virus. And the cycle continues.

Parental math anxiety[5] has been exacerbated even further due to Common Core Math Standards and schools introducing new methods of teaching and learning math, said Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, who has studied the effects of homework.

TEACHERS[6]

Teachers who experience math anxiety transmit it to their students. Girls are especially affected[7] when a teacher publicly announces math hatred before she picks up the chalk. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that female - but not male - mathematical achievement was diminished in response to a female teacher's mathematical anxiety. The effect was correlated: the higher a teacher's anxiety, the lower the scores.

SOCIETY[8]

We all have experienced an increase in society's pressure to do well and get into college. Classrooms have become highly competitive environments with an increase in high-stakes testing. High-stakes academic cultures have a dark side by increasing the pressure on students to perform well, which then increases stress, resulting in math anxiety.

TIMED TESTS AND FOCUS ON SPEED[9]
The damage starts early in the United States, with school districts requiring young children to take timed math tests as early as the age of 5. This is despite research[10] that has shown that timed tests are the direct cause of the early onset of math anxiety.

PROCEDURAL TEACHING[11]

Mathematics is rarely taught as a creative endeavor, in which all students can participate in some way. When math is taught as a performance subject - where the focus is merely to get questions correct - math anxiety can grow. Math is even used as a tool for weeding out students - a fact students are aware of - which only increased the stress-anxiety-performance feedback loop. More than any other subject math is about tests, grades, homework and competitions.
How can we prevent math anxiety?

Allow math to be seen as an open set of ideas[12][13] that they can play with and explore. Students see themselves as capable and they see math as a playground. Unfortunately, people have a much more negative relationship because they see math as a set of procedures and calculations, that is all about speed and performance - and they are terrified of failure and believe that struggle means you are not a "math person."

Assess fluency WITHOUT using timed tests[14]

Avoid phrases like "I'm not a math person"[15]

Create a "math positive" atmosphere at home and in the classroom[16]

Establish a positive nighttime routine with parents and student. Bedtime Math[17] has been shown to reduce math anxiety while also increase math performance at school.

Going to tutors[18]

I know this is a load of information. Rather than going the way of the ostrich and sticking our head in the sand, let's address the issue of math anxiety head on. Begin by informing yourself and others. Start a conversation with teachers and parents. Collaborate on how to make tiny changes in your classroom.

And best of all...watch your students benefit from all this.

Other Links
The Math Anxiety-Performance Link: A Global Phenomenon Dispelling Myths About Mathematics Cambridge Mathematics Are parents transmitting math anxiety to their children somehow? It's time to stop the clock on math anxiety. Here's the latest research on how. Stop telling kids you're bad at math. You are spreading math anxiety 'like a virus.'Timed Tests and the Development of Math Anxiety

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Infinite Insights Episode 5 - Math Anxiety and Timed Tests

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It is hard to imagine that in this day and age - with all the new brain research, neuroscience, sophisticated studies at hand - that we still have to convince people that math anxiety is a real thing. This reminds me of a true medical story: In 1980 an Australian doctor[1] discovered that (and proved...

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Homework Battles: When Parent Help Negatively Affects Students | MindShift | KQED News

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Homework Battles: When Parent Help Negatively Affects Students | MindShift | KQED News

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Bindaas Madhavi/Flickr

Homework has become as much work for parents as it is for kids in many families when parents slog through assignments together with their kids every night. They see it as part of their parental duty to help their children. But when it comes to assisting kids with challenging subjects or an unfamiliar way of learning - like the new Common Core math standards and homework that requires approaches very different from those learned in previous generations - frustration that builds from struggling over the homework can foster anxiety.

A study conducted by researchers at the Human Performance Lab at the University of Chicago has found that if parents have high levels of math anxiety and give a lot of homework help (more than two to three times a week), they can have a negative impact on their child's math achievement and increase their child's math anxiety.

"When parents are really high in math anxiety their children - both boys and girls - learn less math over the school year and become more anxious."

"This is one of the first studies to look at how math anxiety is produced," said Erin Maloney, lead author on the study. Researchers have already established that a teacher's math anxiety negatively affects student performance over the course of the year and leads female students to endorse negative stereotypes about girls' math abilities. For this study, Maloney and her co-authors Gerardo Ramirez, Elizabeth A. Gunderson, Susan C. Levine and Sian L. Beilock statistically controlled for teachers' math anxiety and content knowledge, along with the socioeconomic status of the children.

"Kids as young as first grade really do report high anxiety about math and that anxiety is linked to their math achievement," Maloney said. The study found a caregiver's math anxiety negatively impacted both male and female children equally. And, the effects were bigger the more anxious a parent was and the more often they helped with homework. While not a study of female caregivers in particular, 89 percent of primary caregivers in this study were women.

The study was done with a large sample size of children in first and second grade that was designed to be representative of the Illinois state population. Students in the study completed tests measuring math, reading and math anxiety in the first 12 weeks of school. They were tested again in the last 8 weeks of school. Parents were given a 25-question survey that asked questions about how they feel in various real-world situations requiring math, like tipping at a restaurant.

"When parents are really high in math anxiety, their children, both boys and girls, learn less math over the school year and become more anxious over the school year," Maloney said, but only in cases where the primary care provider helped with homework frequently.

The effects of math anxiety on achievement are well documented. Stanford researchers did brain scans of children solving math problems. In math-anxious children, the part of the brain tasked with handling negative emotions was overactive, whereas the math problem solving parts of the brain were diminished. The children's fear was interfering with their ability to use problem solving skills.

Sian Beilock and her colleagues at the Human Performance Lab posited that math anxiety was taking up students' working memory, impeding their ability to succeed on tests. They asked students to write about their math anxiety before a test. By offloading those negative emotions first, the intervention has produced encouraging results in the classroom.

But what are parents to do with this new information?

"It's really not enough for us as educators to just say 'get involved,'" Maloney said. She believes researchers and educators need to develop better tools for parents to understand the math their children are working on so they can help appropriately. Unfamiliar teaching methods heighten the math anxiety that's already found in many American adults.

Homework Battles: When Parent Help Negatively Affects Students

Author

Katrina Schwartz

Katrina Schwartz is a journalist based in San Francisco. She's worked at KPCC public radio in LA and has reported on air and online for KQED since 2010. She's a staff writer for KQED's education blog MindShift.

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Homework Battles: When Parent Help Negatively Affects Students

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Homework has become as much work for parents as it is for kids in many families when parents slog through assignments together with their kids every night. They see it as part of their parental duty to help their children.