The EFFTIPS blog has just published: In the News: Combating the Negative Effects of Math Anxiety
...in which they share information from a recent Science Daily article ask, "What are your experiences with students with math anxiety?"
While I encourage you, of course to check it out and comment over there, I thought I'd ask here - what kinds of things do AE practitioners do to reduce adult learners' math anxieties?
Comments
After reading the article, “Can Writing be the Missing Link for Mathematical Understanding” by Dr. Connie Schrock, I began implementing writing as part of my mathematics class. Each day I assign them a writing task that is math related. For example, I have asked them to complete the following sentence, "If math were a type of sound, what type of sound would it be and why?" This allows me to find out how they feel about mathematics without asking them if they like it. Also, at the end of my courses, I ask my learners to write a letter to my next class with advice on how to be a successful learner. I have found that learners will listen to other learners before they listen to me. Writing about math is very therapeutic for learners who love writing but do not like math.
Website for more information: http://new-to-teaching.blogspot.com/2011/11/writing-examples-in-math.html
Brooke Istas
This morning, Tuesday 9 Oct. 2012, I read your note and clicked on the link that you recommended, namely:
http://new-to-teaching.blogspot.com/2011/11/writing-examples-in-math.html
Since I knew nothing about this site, I went to the Home page of the site:
http://new-to-teaching.blogspot.com
Math Techniques & Strategies
The first item on the page was: Tuesday's Amazing Math Activities Write-Around
and the picture illustrating the paragraph showed a few hand-written lines presumably steps of an evaluation of the expression
(2 - 7)^2 - (4 -7)^3 with a final answer of 234, instead of the correct value 52. The thing was wrong already from the second line -- clearly a mistaken understanding of the expression and not just an arithmetic mistake!
This might not be such a good blog to recommend to math teachers -- who knows what other egregious mistakes may show up in other places on the site!
Later, on the same blog Math Techniques and Strategies at:
new-to-teaching.blogspot.com
I turned to the page Lesson Ideas
And the first entry there was the following:(August 2011) My current lesson idea is making a math trail around the school area. I have been thinking about going out to the track that is at my school and trying to video tape someone running and jumping in to the sand pit (long jump). That function describing them jumping at a time is described by a square root function which can be anything. The current algebra book we are using describes it as y=10√x. Measured in the maximum height at time t.
This seems too disjointed and lacking in detail to work out precisely what he has in mind for the modeling, but I certainly don't see how one could reasonably model a long jump by using a square root function. So again, I would not be inclined to recommend this blog to anyone -- unless you are turned on by searching for other errors.
Ladnor,
The lesson that you reference does show a picture of a learner's work, not the working being taught. Did you read the summary about the lesson? It states that this instructor groups students in small groups of 5 and has them work together to find the solution. They utilize these mistakes as teaching moments. In adult education, these conversations prove to be the most valuable because it provides a connection to the math. For Example, They a discussion about why is it a mistake? what is the mistake? does the law of exponents address this? what is the law of exponents that makes this answer false?. This is a great website but you should thoroughly read all the information.
Brooke Istas
Subject Matter Expert
Math and Numeracy
Hi Math & Numeracy group members,
Durenclee recently posted a similar message on Math Anxiety to the Disabilities in Adult Education group. I would like very much for one of the math experts in this group to post a response to her discussion thread for my users. Anything on techniques, strategies, best practices, etc., for adult students with math anxiety would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Rochelle Kenyon, Subject Matter Expert
Disabilities in Adult Education group
https://community.lincs.ed.gov/group/disabilities-adult-education
Please bear with the long introduction. I'll get to the "anxiety" problem at the end.
I'm wondering if any of you have read the book OUTLIERS by Malcolm Gladwell.
He talks about the "Matthew effect" - that age difference between the oldest children on a sports team and the youngest ones. All are born within the same 12 months, but the older ones are more physically mature, so they do better from the start, thus getting more attention and practice time. In hockey, this turns into most NFL hockey players being born in the first 3 months of the calendar year because Jan. 1 is the cut-off date for Canadian youth hockey.
The same applies in math. 4th graders born late in the school year did worse on a standardized math test than 4th graders born early in the school year (Gladwell cites the study in his book). The difference was: 80th %-ile for the older kids, 68th %-ile for the younger kids.
Here is my take on what happens: Brain research (University of Oregon - Michael Posner's group) showed that children cannot keep two things in mind at the same time until they are almost 8 years old.
Understanding subtraction requires thinking about two things at the same time: the whole amount AND the part you know as being within that whole amoung. Subtraction is introduced in 2nd grade, when the younger children are not yet 8 years old. Their brains are too biologically immature to think the way you need to think to understand subtraction (or fractions). The anxiety starts there.
I explain this brain development to my students. I tell them that if they were born late in the school year, their brains had not yet developed the connection to understand subtraction when it was introduced to them. They are adults now. They can understand. We will go back and patch the holes.
I tell them they are not dumb in math; they were just young. They don't need to be anxious about math any more.
You would be surprised how that takes the load off for many people.
Dorothea Steinke
Front Range Community College, Westminster, CO
I love Gladwell! What a perfect example - and this is so true.
Kathy
My all time favorite student response was---If math were a food it would be steak because sometimes it is tough, but keep chewing! Linda
Thanks for posting this article! This is my passion right here -- actually working on something that I hope to launch soon regarding ways educators/students can conquer their math fears.
But for now here is a link to a presentation I gave a while back highlighting on the ways I would reduce anxiety in my math class. Now my class was with college students (traditional/non-traditional) but I was able to utilize some of the same techniques during my practicum.
http://prezi.com/sxs-c9oad2i2/tips-for-educators-to-help-students-overcome-math-anxiety/?auth_key=d94a54a466dd231603323f142e8fec5f203ce4cd
Maranda