DreamBox Learning®» Math Anxiety

Little Girls, Math Anxiety, and Stereotypes

Slavi — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:44:34 +0000

A fascinating recent study claims that if a female elementary teacher is anxious about math, chances are that her female students’ performance would suffer. Note that it doesn’t matter if she’s actually good or bad at math—it’s all about anxiety! This is interesting not only because 90% of US elementary math teachers are women, but because it contradicts our beliefs that it’s only skill that matters—not attitude. The study reveals that you can know math, and yet if you’re anxious you’re impairing your students. I encourage everyone to read "Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement"* (you can find it here – it’s just 4 pages long). In addition to the findings and to the very creative way the researchers measure kids’ “gender ability beliefs”, Figure 2 of the study really struck me. I believe that it contains powerful practical advice for parents and teachers alike. On this graph there are four bars:

Average results for boys with strong gender stereotype beliefs
Average results for boys with weak gender stereotype beliefs
Average result for girls with strong gender stereotype beliefs
Average result for girls with weak gender stereotype beliefs

“Gender stereotype beliefs” is the degree to which a child believes that “boys are good at math, girls are good at reading”. The graph shows that boys who believe this stereotype score higher than boys who don’t; and girls who believe the stereotype score significantly lower than girls who don’t! Not only is the difference significant for the observer, it is also “statistically significant”—or, put in plain English, it’s not just a pure random coincidence, it’s a scientific truth. So what’s the practical advice for parents and teachers? To me it is that we need to be extremely careful what we tell our children and what stereotypes we create in their young minds. Because, as the study scientifically proves, they may all turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. * The study was conducted by Sian L. Beilock, Elizabeth A. Gunderson, Gerardo Ramirez, and Susan C. Levine; and published by the Department of Psychology and Committee on Education, University of Chicago, IL 60607

What's Math Got to Do with It?

Becca — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:39:46 +0000

courtesy of Barnes & Noble

In my other life, I am a graduate student which means that I am constantly searching and reading research and books regarding mathematics education. In the midst of one of these recent searches, I ran across a book by Jo Boaler (a former professor of mathematics education at Stanford University) that is scheduled for release on June 30, 2009--What’s Math Got to Do With It?: How Parents and Teachers Can Help Children Learn to Love Their Least Favorite Subject. While it appears that this book may be the paperback version of Boaler’s book that was released in August 2008 (What’s Math Got to Do With It?: Helping Children Learn to Love Their Most Hated Subject--and Why It's Important for America), the sub-title is different and that caught my attention. It’s not often that a book is intended for both teachers AND parents (which may be the reason for the change); more often, it’s either-or. Stay tuned for a review later this summer! But in the mean time it may be just the book that is needed to encourage parents and teachers to enter a dialogue about the mathematical learning opportunities for students.

Cowboys, Actresses, and Mathematicians

Byron — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:15:08 +0000

I recently came across two articles that really caught my eye.The first was in the Wall Street Journal and was a ranking of the best jobs in the US. Mathematician was ranked #1, with Actuary and Statistician holding #2 and #3 respectively. Computer, science, and engineering related jobs also were very well represented in the top of the list. Everybody has a different take on what makes a good job. And we should be thankful for that. Down towards the bottom of the list are jobs society depends on such as firefighter, nurse, and child care worker. So the listing isn’t about importance or value, but rather more narrowly focused on pay, stress, and working conditions.

Math Education: A Pathway with Limitless Choices For a Child

That said, given the wide range of doors opened by a studying math, science, and engineering, you would think more parents would encourage their children to consider these areas. Not so, according to a second article publishing the results of a poll by Harris Interactive on behalf of the American Society for Quality. A few highlights: 97% of parents “said they believe that knowledge of math and science will help their children have a successful career.” Yet, “only 20% of parents have encouraged/will encourage their child/children to consider an engineering career.” OK, so maybe it slipped parents' minds to make the recommendation. But the really disappointing results for me were: “More girls say their parents are likely to encourage them to become an actress (21%) than an engineer (10%)."And, “31% of boys vs. 10% of girls say their parents have encouraged them to think about an engineering career." So, with all due apologies to Willie Nelson: Parents, don’t you let babies grow up to be actresses. Let them be doctors, mathematicians, engineers, and such.

Learning Math is a Set of Screwdrivers

Lorenzo — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:12:25 +0000

I remember my first day in middle school in Florence, Italy. It is a sunny morning in September. The classroom is full of nervous eleven year olds, glancing around studying the faces of the strangers sitting in the same room. Everyone has a brand new backpack, deformed by the heavy load of pristine new books; you can see all the new clothes, new shoes, new pens and pen pouches, new notebooks that the parents bought in the summer weeks preceding this very important day. The aroma of freshly sharpened No.2 pencils, papers of many kinds, vinyl binders, and books is overwhelming and exciting. Everybody is on their best behavior, trying to make a good first impression, ready to learn and make friends; ready to be exposed to all the new and exciting knowledge reserved for middle school kids, and become part of a club that was out of reach until this very day. The big kids club!

A woman enters the classroom, greets us with a simple “Buongiorno”, and writes her name on the blackboard. She looks unhappy and unfriendly. She announces that she is the math teacher, and that she is going to start immediately by assessing where we are at in our math skills. Her concept of “assessing” is giving us a nasty inquisitive look and stating: “You are assumed to know additions and subtractions and multiplications. If you don’t know, it is a problem because we won’t review these. Now, let’s see: who can’t do division?”

Panic! Everybody is paralyzed in fear. The excitement sinks in every heart. All of a sudden I could swear that looking out the window the sky appears cloudy and gray. Nobody moves. Why would anybody in their right mind denounce themselves as ignorant to this woman on their first day of school? The woman continues “OK, so everybody appears to know how to do division. Very good.” She smiles sarcastically and stares at the list of names on the desk. She lifts up her head and points her finger toward a student in the middle row. “You, in the red shirt. Yes, you! What is your name?” A boy in his new red shiny shirt announces his name with a trembling voice. You can almost hear his thoughts “Darn! I knew this shirt was too bright!” The teacher points at the blackboard and says, “Come here at the board please, and write this division: 132 divided by 15, let’s see how you do.” The rest is a blur. I wasn’t the kid in a red shirt, and I could have probably done that division, but that didn’t matter at all. The only thing that was clear was that math was bad news.

What a great way to teach kids to hate math. Math all of a sudden became cold, dry, and unforgiving. Something to fear; something to be afraid of!

Math Learning Doesn’t Have to Be Scary

That was one of the worst math teachers I ever had. Not because she didn’t know math – she had a degree in it - but because she couldn’t teach it. She just terrorized us with her ways, making us feel like we were always supposed to know something that we didn’t know. I hated math during middle school and I didn’t do too well at it. Only a few kids did. At that time, I would have never believed that a few years later, in high school, I would have passed my math graduation exam with flying colors, achieving the highest possible score in the state exams and that I would have been in love with math so much that I chose a major in Computer Science.

The only difference between middle school and high school was the teacher I had. In high school I found a fantastic teacher. He taught us to see math as a set of tools – “a collection of screwdrivers” as he used to call it - that helps us solve real, practical and material problems of everyday life. He helped me understand the concept of “number” in a way that became a natural way of thinking. It wasn’t an abstruse concept to memorize as-is, a confusing story to repeat when asked by a teacher, a table of faceless relationships between numbers, or a set of rules to apply to pass a test. It came alive. I could see numbers in everyday things, and their relationships and properties were clear and fascinating. Even the most complex parts of the high school curriculum such as limits, integrals, mathematical analysis, complex numbers, and linear programming became a set of practical tools to understand and resolve real world problems.

This teacher made a significant difference in my life, and today I am hoping to use the “set of screwdrivers” he gave me to build programs that help kids master, deeply understand, and love these very fundamental concepts that helped me so much in life.