Attitudes of prospective elementary school teachers toward mathematics and three other subject areas

Studies of attitudes toward learning and teaching mathematics have been reported throughout a period of extensive curriculum revision. Dutton (1951, 1954, 1956, 1962, as c ited in the bibliography) developed scales to asess a ttitudes of prospective elementary teachers and children toward arithmetic. When he compared the responses to his scales in 1954 and 1962, he concluded that no significant changes in the a ttitude of prospective e lementa ry teachers and children toward arithmetic had occurred between those two years. Smith (1964) later administe red the Dutton scales to prospective elementary teachers. When he compared his results with Dutton's of 1954, he found that the 1964 group was more favorably inclined toward arithmetic than the 1954 group. Smith based th is conclusion on the results of the subject's self-rated feelings toward arithmetic as indicated on an e leven-point scale from “strongly against” to “strongly in favor.” Of Smith's subjects, 88.6 percent declared themselves either neutral or favorable toward arithmetic, compared with 79.5 percent of Dutton's subjects.