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I've been a middle and high school math teacher for 25 years, mostly to at-risk students. Almost all of them have what we call "math anxiety". By far, the most
by japhyr 8y ago
I've been a middle and high school math teacher for 25 years, mostly to at-risk students. Almost all of them have what we call "math anxiety".
By far, the most common reason I see it is how they were treated by math teachers. One student had a teacher who made students go up to the board and write their incorrect solutions on the board, and they had to stay there until they "figured it out". Many have been told they were stupid, or told they would just never be able to learn. That experience is way more common than many teachers and administrators want to admit.
There's also the pacing issue. Many students get lost in a math class at some point in their early learning career, and then there's no real way to get caught back up. This compounds with teachers who don't really understand math, who are just teaching algorithms and rules and don't know what to do with students who are lost.
I've had good success just by meeting each student where they're at, and letting each student progress from where they are. I always look for what students do understand, and build on that understanding. It typically takes students one or two classes being treated well to start really recovering from that earlier anxiety.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago>There's also the pacing issue. Many students get lost in a math class at some point in their early learning career, // Following pupils pace is a failing of mass education (in the UK) in general I feel. At primary school I was disengaged from maths because it was so facile. To some extent I've seen that with my kids too -- for example entering nursery they do counting to 3 (!). But my youngster already counts beyond 20. We sought to use Flexi-schooling to mitigate this effect but unfortunately it's down to individual schools and our headteacher isn't interested (I think that contradicts the Education Act, in spirit at least).
- liveoneggs 8y agodoes "new math" help or hurt this?
- japhyr 8y agoI'm not quite sure what you mean by "new math".
- klyrs 8y agoLook up the Tom Lehrer song with that name. I'm a mathematician who followed a long and nonstandard path into the field and I agree with 100% of what you've said. In my experience, it's "cool" to be bad at math -- typified by that Tom Lehrer bit
- telchar 8y agoI believe it was an idea that had some popularity in the 60's and 70's where they tried to start math education by teaching students foundational concepts like sets rather than starting them with calculational methods (i.e. arithmetic).
- liveoneggs 8y agocommon core math; btw if you didn't understand that reference i believe you are either not US based or lying
- maxxxxx 8y ago"There's also the pacing issue" Very true. When we started doing algebra I simply didn't get it until my older sister sat with me. After a few weeks I went from total failure to saying "algebra is easy". Without my sister I probably would never have caught up.
- Jtsummers 8y ago> Many have been told they were stupid, or told they would just never be able to learn. This happened to my sister (now an AE with several graduate degrees). It set her back years, even though she could do the math she believed she couldn't. This caused her to perform poorly on exams. Sometime in high school she started performing better, but it was in college when she finally realized that she was good at it. That particular teacher was fired before the year was up, but that doesn't help the kids she hurt.