Female Teachers' Math Anxiety
Hi Friends,
Our early math teachers, those we have in elementary school, can communicate their fear of math to us, I'm sorry to say. A bit earlier, Sonia Pressman Fuentes sent me a link to an article citing a study by Beilock et al from University of Chicago, that was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February, 2010. It was called "Female teachers' math anxiety affects girls' math achievement."
The article shows, as the abstract puts it, that "There was no relation between a teacher's math anxiety and her students' math achievement at the beginning of the school year. By the school year's end, however, the more anxious teachers were about math, the more likely girls (but not boys) were to endorse the commonly held stereotype that "boys are good at math, and girls are good at reading" and the lower these girls' math achievement." They asked the students to draw a student good at math and one good at reading. The girls at the end of the year more often drew boys for the "good at science" student, when their female math teachers were fearful of math. This situation is a problem because a preponderance of elementary math teachers are female.
We need to get concerned about training of math teachers so that they can get over this fear, or we may never succeed in raising a fearless generation of women scientists.
Do you recognize this problem in your own experiences?
A. I had periods of not like math or thinking I wasn't good at it due to female math teachers' behavior.
B. I might have experienced this problem but I can't recall anything specific.
C. I never had a problem with female math teachers, in fact they inspired me.
Hi Helen,
Sounds like an interesting HHMI experiment. I am thinking about TOPS program run by Occidental College and I see one big difference: Chris Craney and I had the teachers say what they wanted and designed the program to fit that, while I'm not sure but the HHMi one sound like it was designed without much teacher input. Our workshops were a couple of weeks and went over the teachers' choice of five or six experiments that the teachers had suggested, with discussions of what could be done to extend them and how they could go wrong. We delivered them in a van of equipment and supplies with a master teacher would could help teachers who had forgotten what was included in the summer workshop. I believe it's still running, almost 20 years after I left Oxy. Our motto was "GTO" give teachers ownership. Might be good to incorporate in the new generation of workshops by whomever takes it on.
cheers,
Laura
HHMI has funded teacher training previously. It had mixed success in Utah where I participated as a graduate student. They were smart in using grad students to perform the teacher training (the teachers were too intimidated by profs to ask any questions) and they paid for the training in the summer over one week. It was focused on using one kit for a genetic science unit and it did get some teachers on board. This was for 8th graders which HHMI was targeting at that time. After working with them for 3 years and helping to train over 60 teachers around the state, I would estimate that only 5 walked away with both the desire and ability to execute the unit. Another 10 perhaps had the desire and would work to overcome their limitations. Most came because they were told to come by their principals and it was free. Few had the confidence at the end to actually do the unit. They were mostly terrified that a student would ask a question they couldn't answer and didn't feel comfortable saying "I don't know, but I'll find out for you!". It made me very scared of public schools...which is why I am saving my pennies to send my children to private school where I can be assured that the science and math teachers actually have degrees in those subjects! You want reform? Try getting the teachers' unions to fast-track subject matter trained teachers into the classroom! As the director of this program said: I can teach a PhD how to teach HS students in a 2 month intensive summer class. I can't teach an English teacher the Biology content to teach AP Bio in 2 years...
Yes, I agree about Alberts' plan, it does look like a reworking of the good part of the previous plan. So the money people will think it's a new direction but we can have another crack at helping teachers get on board. Now if only there were some funds to pay them to work on it. With the teachers' pay being cut and cut, I doubt they can afford the new training if not paid for it.
I agree, Helen, we need to train people to use the excellent curricula we have. But don't the money men always demand something new? It never occurs to them that what we had would have worked if more resources had been given to implement it. Even if something demonstrably works, we must chase the new.
I saw in Science this week an editorial by Bruce Alberts, one of my science heroes, that there's a new set of Science Standards being released. I hate to say it, but they seem to me to be new-izing the same hands on, how we do science methods that I want to see really used in classrooms, so these standards are the old ones repackaged, in a way. If only teachers who fear science could receive some fun training with these methods! I don't know who will take that on. Some foundation like HHMI could really make an impact by implementing a huge program to inspire and fire up science teachers at all k-12 levels.
cheers,
Laura
Certainly a key point for me in high school was workshops and classes that demonstrated how you would USE the material that was being covered. Did I really need to know all the traits that Mendel used with his pea plants? No, but I did need to understand about variation and the process of selecting traits and their inheritance to do what I was interested in in my bird breeding experiment! My calculus was put to daily use in Physics class, so I always understood the purpose of doing so much seemingly meaningless memorization. Those curricula are well established as part of the National Science Teaching Standards. It's too bad that they are rarely used outside of private schools and even fewer magnet schools than when I went to school in the 80s. What steams me up is this desire to put yet more money into curricula! The curricula are there and are published. Finding teachers who can actually teach the curricula and getting enough to work together to execute interdependent lesson plans and pay for the materials...that is where the money should be spent!
C. I had excellent elementary math teachers, more so female than male. In high school, I had an excellent-inspiring female math teacher, put to shame the male math teachers...kept questioning her as to 'why I needed to know that equation', so her final answer was, go take PHYSICS and you'll see the 'why'. Best advice I ever got in high school~ the light bulb turned on!
C but then I went to a women's high school and college, and probably that matters. The women teaching math were amazing role models for us, seemed to enjoy every equation to the hilt.
A is my answer. I never had a male math teacher until seventh grade for pre-algebra, a Mr. Splawn who really seemed to love math. I think it was the first time I realized that was possible. But then, I had another series of math-phobic women and male coaches who just assigned homework problems and graded them out of the answer book, dumb as posts. I finally had an inspiring female math teacher in my senior year in high school.
cheers,
Laura
B. I didn't have female math teachers very often in elementary school, and the one I did have in 4th grade in a gifted school was certainly not afraid of math! She had a PhD in the subject. But I can say that my male math teachers who thought that girls were just not good in math did affect my interest. If I hadn't loved Physics in high school (and calculus based physics hadn't been offered in my magnet school) I probably would have stopped at Trig until college! I'm glad I didn't as I love math and especially calculus with how elegantly you can do physics with it, and I resonate with what Small Science Woman posted in thinking at the time what a big weirdo I must be to enjoy it so much...not sure if that was gender specific though!
I did have a lot of female teachers with inspiring love of English and history and math avoidance. I was very surprised when I got to algebra to find that I understood it without really trying. Did that mean I wasn't a real girl, I wondered? So this article really resonates with me!
