Elementary School Teachers’ Math Anxiety and Students’ Math Learning: A Large‐Scale Replication

Math anxiety is a common problem that has numerous adverse impacts, including the avoidance of math-related tasks, classes, and careers. Past studies have shown that teachers with math anxiety may spend less time engaged in math instruction in their classrooms. Reduced instructional time can result in students lagging behind their peers in math skills acquisition. The present study examines the impact of a brief expressive writing intervention on three preservice elementary school teachers with math anxiety. Expressive writing interventions have been successfully used to reduce a wide variety of negative symptoms and also to improve math performance. Through the use of a multiple-baseline, multiple-probe, single-case research design study, the current researchers examined the impacts of three 10-min expressive writing interventions on two variables: levels of math anxiety (as measured by the FS-ANX subscale of the Fennema-Sherman Mathematics Anxiety Scale) and the number of minutes engaged in math instruction. Though results for math anxiety were somewhat encouraging, results for teacher instructional time were mixed. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.

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Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.0910967107 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 107 (5) ◽

pp. 1860-1863 ◽

Cited By ~ 314

Author(s):

Sian L. Beilock ◽

Elizabeth A. Gunderson ◽

Gerardo Ramirez ◽

Susan C. Levine

Keyword(s):

Elementary School ◽

Elementary School Teachers ◽

Math Achievement ◽

Math Anxiety ◽

The United States ◽

Early Elementary ◽

School Teachers ◽

Female Teachers ◽

School Year ◽

Early Elementary School

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.

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Not all elementary school teachers are scared of math

Journal of Numerical Cognition ◽

10.5964/jnc.6063 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 (3) ◽

pp. 275-294 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Christina Artemenko ◽

Nicolas Masson ◽

Carrie Georges ◽

Hans-Christoph Nuerk ◽

Krzysztof Cipora

Keyword(s):

Elementary School ◽

Elementary School Teachers ◽

Role Models ◽

Math Anxiety ◽

Reference Group ◽

Reference Sample ◽

Female Students ◽

Mathematical Education ◽

School Teachers ◽

Teaching Attitudes

Teachers are strong role models for their pupils, especially at the beginning of education. This also holds true for math: If teachers feel anxious about math, the consequences on the mathematical education of their pupils is detrimental. Previous studies have shown that (future) elementary school teachers have higher levels of math anxiety than most people studying other subjects. Here, we set out to conceptually replicate these findings (e.g., meta-analysis by Hembree, 1990, https://doi.org/10.2307/749455) by comparing math anxiety levels of pre-service and in-service German and Belgian elementary school teachers to a reference group of German university students from various fields of study. Moreover, we questioned this finding by asking which elementary school teachers experience math anxiety, considering gender, specialization, and experience, and investigated how math anxiety relates to teaching attitudes towards math. We replicated the previous finding by showing that female elementary school teachers have a higher level of math anxiety as compared to other female students. Importantly, female elementary school teachers without math specialization indeed had higher levels of math anxiety than female students from other fields and almost a quarter of them experience critical math anxiety. In contrast, female elementary school teachers with math specialization did not show an increased level of math anxiety as compared to the reference sample. Considering that not only these but all teachers, regardless of specialization, teach math in elementary school in the investigated educational systems, the math anxiety of elementary school teachers is a potential problem for their pupils’ math attitudes and learning.

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How Teachers Conduct Online Teaching During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study of Taiwan

Frontiers in Education ◽

10.3389/feduc.2021.675434 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 ◽

Author(s):

Sheng-Yi Wu

Keyword(s):

Elementary School ◽

Secondary School ◽

Elementary School Teachers ◽

Online Teaching ◽

Large Scale ◽

Sequential Analysis ◽

Secondary School Teachers ◽

Task Assignment ◽

School Teachers ◽

Instructional Behaviors

Although online teaching has been encouraged for many years, the COVID-19 pandemic has promoted it on a large scale. During the COVID-19 pandemic, students at all levels (college, secondary school, and elementary school) were unable to attend school. To maintain student learning, most schools have adopted online teaching. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the design of online teaching activities and online teaching processes adopted by teachers at all levels during the pandemic. Online questionnaires were administered to teachers in Taiwan who had conducted online teaching (including during the formal suspension of classes or simulation exercises) due to the pandemic. According to a quantitative analysis and lag sequential analysis, the instructional behaviors most frequently performed by teachers were roll calls, lectures with a presentation screen, in-class task (assignment) allocation, and whole-class synchronous video-/audio-based discussion. Thus, there were six common significant sequential behaviors among teachers at all levels that were categorized into the four instructional stages of identifying the teaching environment, teaching the class, discussing and evaluating learning effectiveness. College teachers reminded students of some matters first and then called the roll after the students went online. Secondary school teachers were more likely to arrange practical or experimental courses and to use synchronous and asynchronous interactive activities. Finally, elementary school teachers were more likely to use homemade videos and share their screens for teaching and to arrange a large variety of teaching interactions. The differences among colleges, secondary schools, and elementary schools were identified, and suggestions were made accordingly.

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Mathematics Anxiety and Math Instructional Time in First-Year Elementary School Teachers

10.31234/osf.io/9krmh ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Heidi L. Morton ◽

Cass Dykeman

Keyword(s):

Elementary School ◽

Elementary School Teachers ◽

Expressive Writing ◽

Mathematics Anxiety ◽

Math Anxiety ◽

First Year ◽

Math Instruction ◽

School Teachers ◽

Writing Interventions ◽

The Impact

Math anxiety is a pervasive problem that negatively impacts both children and adults. Teachers with math anxiety can unintentionally pass this anxiety on to their students; in addition, past studies have shown that these teachers may also end up spending less time engaged in math instruction. Both of these results can negatively impact their students for years to come. The present study examines the impact of a brief expressive writing intervention on three first-year elementary school teachers with math anxiety. Expressive writing interventions have been shown to have positive impacts on variables ranging from test anxiety to math performance. This multiple-baseline, multiple-probe, single-case research design examined the impacts of three 10-min expressive writing interventions on two variables: levels of math anxiety (as measured by the FS-ANX subscale of the Fennema-Sherman Mathematics Anxiety Scale) and the number of minutes engaged in math instruction. Results for both variables were mixed. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Download Full-text

Not all elementary school teachers are scared of math

10.31234/osf.io/wej8z ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Christina Artemenko ◽

Nicolas Masson ◽

Carrie Georges ◽

Hans-Christoph Nuerk ◽

Krzysztof Cipora

Keyword(s):

Elementary School ◽

Elementary School Teachers ◽

Role Models ◽

Math Anxiety ◽

Reference Group ◽

Reference Sample ◽

Female Students ◽

Mathematical Education ◽

School Teachers ◽

Teaching Attitudes

Teachers are strong role models for their pupils, especially at the beginning of education. This also holds true for math: If teachers feel anxious about math, the consequences on the mathematical education of their pupils is detrimental.Previous studies have shown that (future) elementary school teachers have higher levels of math anxiety than most people studying other subjects. Here, we set out to conceptually replicate these findings (e.g., meta-analysis by Hembree, 1990) by comparing math anxiety levels of pre-service and in-service German and Belgian elementary school teachers to a reference group of German university students from various fields of study. Moreover, we questioned this finding by asking which elementary school teachers experience math anxiety, considering gender, specialization, and experience, and investigated how math anxiety relates to teaching attitudes towards math.We replicated the previous finding by showing that female elementary school teachers have a higher level of math anxiety as compared to other female students. Importantly, female elementary school teachers without math specialization indeed had higher levels of math anxiety than female students from other fields and almost a quarter of them experience critical math anxiety. In contrast, female elementary school teachers with math specialization did not show an increased level of math anxiety as compared to the reference sample. Considering that not only these but all teachers, regardless of specialization, teach math in elementary school in the investigated educational systems, the math anxiety of elementary school teachers is a potential problem for their pupils’ math attitudes and learning.

Download Full-text