Can someone explain to me how telling a child that my math is not up to snuff equates to anxiety in a child, beyond just stating ‘it hurts the children’?
Giving them the idea that “math” as a concept can be something you can choose to not engage in because “some people just aren’t good at it”. Like anything, it takes understanding and practice. It gives kids an out from grappling with challenging concepts and expanding their cognitive abilities
I vividly remember watching my classmates turn their brains off (through no fault of their own!) in real time when math or reading or even biology classes started later on. And say stuff like “I can’t understand any of this”, “it isn’t even worth trying” etc.
This isn’t to invalidate anybody’s experience with dyscalculia or similar, or anybody that struggled for non-diagnosable reasons, but anything that builds up any subject as this unapproachable thing that you are predetermined to be good/bad at can rob a kid or adult of the opportunity to give it an honest attempt with a positive attitude.
My advice for parents or other role models is to say “I’ve forgotten how to do this” or “they didn’t teach it like this when I was little” or even “i used to struggle with x subject” instead of saying “I am bad at/can’t do x subject”. It’s a subtle difference, but for kids, it’s not that they can’t do it, they just haven’t gotten it yet.
Why can’t you choose not to engage with math? I would say most adults require very little engagement with math. For most people, understanding and practice requires motivation. What motivates me to learn advanced mathematics? If you want to be a physicist or engineer I guess you’ll be motivated to learn but for most people it just seems like a headache or waste of time.
The article doesn’t link to any studies and that is sucky.
That said, when I have a question like that, it’s a great opportunity to search for an answer!
My first stop is always Google Scholar (it really is the best, but the link tracking is anxiety-inducing) or Research Gate. In this case, you could search for “learned helplessness in math” or “teacher math anxiety effect on learning outcomes” or “do students inherit math anxiety from their teachers/parents/etc” or “learned helplessness in elementary/primary school”. Keep adjusting your search terms and putting quotes around particular phrases until you find some answers!
You could rephrase that as “I haven’t learned research skills yet” considering the discussion we are having, lol. Here is some info on how to research better!
Another thing you can do is go to a university or local library website or in person or call them on the phone and find their “research guides” section for the general topic of your question.
Mainstream reporting is very bad at actually citing the works they’re writing about but these three paragraphs are summaries of the research.
Anxiety over mathematics has been recognized as a grade killer. The National Mathematics Advisory Panel of the U.S. Department of Education has found that anxious students perform lower than their abilities. What’s more, there is growing evidence that mathematical anxiety can be passed on like a virus from teachers to students as well as from parents to children.
Girls are especially affected when a teacher publicly announces math hatred before she picks up the chalk. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that female — but not male — mathematical achievement was diminished in response to a female teacher’s mathematical anxiety. The effect was correlated: the higher a teacher’s anxiety, the lower the scores.
Parents’ mathematical anxiety can have a similar effect on their children. Researchers observed that children who received math homework help from mathematically fearful parents showed weaker math achievements than their peers, which in turn resulted in increased math anxiety for the children themselves.
If by “where’s the research” you mean where are the actual papers, they’re not that hard to find, i got these two in like 2 minutes of searching just copy pasting the quoted journals with some extra words in there
(edit: not to say i’m faulting you for not immediately getting what they mean by “research says no”, science communication really is in the dumpster; a regular ass person that has a passing interest in something really has to do this extra homework and trawl these papers that were never meant for them to read to get at the good bits which should have been in the reporting itself)
Can someone explain to me how telling a child that my math is not up to snuff equates to anxiety in a child, beyond just stating ‘it hurts the children’?
Where the research?
Giving them the idea that “math” as a concept can be something you can choose to not engage in because “some people just aren’t good at it”. Like anything, it takes understanding and practice. It gives kids an out from grappling with challenging concepts and expanding their cognitive abilities
I vividly remember watching my classmates turn their brains off (through no fault of their own!) in real time when math or reading or even biology classes started later on. And say stuff like “I can’t understand any of this”, “it isn’t even worth trying” etc.
This isn’t to invalidate anybody’s experience with dyscalculia or similar, or anybody that struggled for non-diagnosable reasons, but anything that builds up any subject as this unapproachable thing that you are predetermined to be good/bad at can rob a kid or adult of the opportunity to give it an honest attempt with a positive attitude.
My advice for parents or other role models is to say “I’ve forgotten how to do this” or “they didn’t teach it like this when I was little” or even “i used to struggle with x subject” instead of saying “I am bad at/can’t do x subject”. It’s a subtle difference, but for kids, it’s not that they can’t do it, they just haven’t gotten it yet.
You’re just repeating the article, comrade. That’s no different than the writers statement.
The article says there’s research behind it, but I didn’t see where it was presented. Did I miss it somewhere?
Idk I didn’t read the article, but I was a teacher for 10 years
Why can’t you choose not to engage with math? I would say most adults require very little engagement with math. For most people, understanding and practice requires motivation. What motivates me to learn advanced mathematics? If you want to be a physicist or engineer I guess you’ll be motivated to learn but for most people it just seems like a headache or waste of time.
The article doesn’t link to any studies and that is sucky.
That said, when I have a question like that, it’s a great opportunity to search for an answer!
My first stop is always Google Scholar (it really is the best, but the link tracking is anxiety-inducing) or Research Gate. In this case, you could search for “learned helplessness in math” or “teacher math anxiety effect on learning outcomes” or “do students inherit math anxiety from their teachers/parents/etc” or “learned helplessness in elementary/primary school”. Keep adjusting your search terms and putting quotes around particular phrases until you find some answers!
I found one study that has a pretty good literature review at the beginning. They cite another study for each argument it makes. Try reading the abstract and the introduction:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325621246_Mathematics_Anxiety_Perceived_Mathematics_Self-efficacy_and_Learned_Helplessness_in_Mathematics_in_Faculty_of_Education_Students
Thanks for this, I’m bad at research.
You could rephrase that as “I haven’t learned research skills yet” considering the discussion we are having, lol. Here is some info on how to research better!
General research guide
Search terms/keywords guide
Another thing you can do is go to a university or local library website or in person or call them on the phone and find their “research guides” section for the general topic of your question.
Lol, I was joking based on the topic. These links are significantly useful though, I do tend to over-rely on normal search engines.
Mainstream reporting is very bad at actually citing the works they’re writing about but these three paragraphs are summaries of the research.
If by “where’s the research” you mean where are the actual papers, they’re not that hard to find, i got these two in like 2 minutes of searching just copy pasting the quoted journals with some extra words in there
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8240551/
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0910967107
(edit: not to say i’m faulting you for not immediately getting what they mean by “research says no”, science communication really is in the dumpster; a regular ass person that has a passing interest in something really has to do this extra homework and trawl these papers that were never meant for them to read to get at the good bits which should have been in the reporting itself)