Not all elementary school teachers are scared of math

Abstract

Teachers are strong role models for their pupils, especially at the very beginning of education, and as such, pupils tend to share their teacher’s attitudes. This also holds true for math: If teachers feel anxious about math, the consequences on the mathematical education of their pupils is detrimental.Previous studies have shown that (future) elementary school teachers have higher levels of math anxiety than most people studying other subjects. Here, we set out to conceptually replicate these findings (e.g., meta-analysis by Hembree, 1990) by comparing math anxiety levels of pre-service and in-service German and Belgian elementary school teachers to a reference group of German university students from various fields of study. Moreover, we questioned this finding by asking which elementary school teachers experience math anxiety, considering gender, specialization, and experience, and investigated how math anxiety relates to teaching attitudes towards math.We replicated the previous finding by showing that female elementary school teachers have a higher level of math anxiety as compared to other female students. Importantly, female elementary school teachers without math specialization indeed had higher levels of math anxiety than female students from other fields. In contrast, female elementary school teachers with math specialization did not show an increased level of math anxiety as compared to the reference sample. Considering that not only these but all teachers, regardless of specialization, teach math in elementary school in the investigated educational systems, the math anxiety of elementary school teachers is a potential problem for their pupils’ math attitudes and learning.

Mathematics anxiety—where are we and where shall we go?

“…Moreover, initiatives should not be limited to children. Early years education teachers often demonstrate relatively high MA, [66][67][68][69] which can lead to increased MA in their pupils. 70 MA intervention programs, therefore, should be developed for such teachers.…”

“…71,72 Outside educational settings Most MA studies have been conducted in educational settings (schools, colleges, and universities). Even those that do not test current pupils/students have usually involved individuals, who were linked to some educational settings: elementary school teachers, 66,70 or parents of elementary school children (e.g., see Refs. [72][73][74].…”

Mathematics anxiety – where are we and where shall we go?

“…The initiatives should not be limited to children. Early years education teachers may reveal relatively high MA [60][61][62][63] and it might increase MA in their pupils 64 . Therefore, MA intervention programs should be also aimed at this group.…”

“…Even those that do not test current pupils/ students have usually involved individuals, who were linked to some educational settings: elementary school teachers 60,64 , or parents of elementary school children (e.g. [65][66][67] ).…”

Anxiety-Related Difficulties With Complex Arithmetic

“…As preregistered (https://aspredicted.org/kc5sj.pdf), data from participants were excluded due to non-completion of the study ( n = 188), not native German speakers ( n = 12), younger than grade 3 ( n = 23), study completion on tablet or smartphone ( n = 2), very or extremely noisy environment during study completion ( n = 5), responding dishonestly ( n = 6), and accuracy below 66% ( n = 10; cf. Artemenko et al, in press). Note that the preregistered exclusion criterion “accuracy below 33%” (below instead of above the chance level of 50%) should have read “accuracy below 66%”; the criterion was changed to this, as had been originally intended.…”