Research: Math Anxiety Starts Young

Math anxiety begins young, with students showing signs of it as early as first and second grade, a University of Chicago researcher says.

Sian Beilock said the youngsters whose school work is hurt the most by math anxiety tend to be the highest achievers. That's because anxiety disrupts working memory, which is typically strongest in those students.
"You can think of working memory as a kind of 'mental scratchpad' that allows us to 'work' with whatever information is temporarily flowing through consciousness," Beilock said. "It's especially important when we have to do a math problem and juggle numbers in our head. Working memory is one of the major building blocks of IQ."
Beilock and three colleagues are the authors of "Math Anxiety, Working Memory and Math Achievement in Early Elementary School," previewed on the website of the Journal of Cognition and Development.
The team found that less adept students tend to deal with arithmetic in other ways than working memory, like counting on their fingers. But they found math anxiety can put students who do depend on working memory as much as a half-year behind those without it.
The study involved 88 first-graders and 66 second-graders in a big-city school system. The team found about half of high-achieving students suffer from math anxiety.
The researchers suggest ways of dealing with math anxiety, including having students write about it before they have to deal with arithmetic.

Reposted

Can comforting students who struggle in math demotivate them?

It's OK - you're just not good at math...

Can comforting students who struggle in math demotivate them—and decrease the number of students pursuing math-related subjects?

Four recent studies say yes on both counts. The studies investigated whether holding a fixed theory of ability—that is, believing that ability is innate—leads teachers not only to comfort students for their perceived low ability following failure but also to use practices that promote students’ long-term low achievement.

These are the report’s major findings:

• Instructors who held a fixed theory of math intelligence more readily judged students to have low ability in math than those who held a malleable theory, which supposes that people can improve their abilities through hard work and practice.
• Instructors who held a fixed theory of math intelligence were more likely to judge that a student had low ability on the basis of a single initial poor performance. They were also more likely to comfort students for their apparent lack of ability and use “kind” strategies that failed to motivate the students to improve, such as assigning less homework and not calling on them in class.
• Students who received comfort-oriented feedback—as opposed to more strategy-focused feedback—assumed the instructor had low expectations for what they might accomplish as well as lower engagement in their learning, even when that feedback was expressed positively—as in, “I know you’re a talented student in general; it’s just that not everyone is a math person.” Moreover, these students had lower expectations and motivation concerning their own abilities and performance. According to the authors, “It is not the case that instructors who believed math intelligence to be fixed failed to consider students’ best interests. Instead, it appears that their fixed view of intelligence led them to express their support and encouragement in unproductive ways that ultimately backfired” (p. 716). The authors conclude that an education system that focuses on accepting weaknesses is not as positive as intended.

Authored by Aneeta Rattan, Catherine Good, and Carol S. Dweck, the report is titled, “It’s OK—Not Everyone Can Be Good at Math: Instructors with an Entity Theory Comfort (and Demotivate) Students.” The report appeared in the April 2012 issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Source:  Ed Leadership September 2012 | Volume 70 | Number 1 Feedback for Learning Pages 8-9

Does math matter?

A new study has found that early math skills predict later academic success. In fact, math skills in K-5 were a stronger predictor than reading skills, attention skills or social skills. In a finding that flies in the face of earlier research, study author Greg Duncan found that behavior problems at that early stage were not associated with later performance in math or reading.
In a separate study, Duncan and a colleague have found that students with persistent math problems in K-5 were much less likely than their peers to graduate from high school or attend college.
Duncan has plans for the next round of research. “The next level of research should focus on why math skills – which combine conceptual and procedural competencies – are the most powerful predictor of subsequent achievement and attainment,” he said in a press release. “Experimental evaluations of early math programs that focus on particular skills and track children’s reading and math performance throughout elementary school could help identify missing causal links between early skills and later success.”
If we knew more about those links, we might do a better job of putting struggling students on a path to success later on.
Source

Preventing math anxiety in middle school students

Register today to attend a free math webinar on the results of research into triggers and best practices for preventing math anxiety in middle level students. You will hear the voices of the students as they relate what works and what doesn't in developing positive dispositions towards mathematics. Bonnstetter will share findings related to teachers' characteristics, instructional strategies, and positive interventions.

Critical Incidents in the Development of
Mathematics Anxiety in Grades 4-8
Wednesday September 15th, 2010
3:30 P.M. EST