Math anxiety starts early. It can be traced as far back as elementary school, mathematics assistant professor Amélie Schinck-Mikel said.
In Schinck-Mikel’s MATH 227 class, Mathematics for Elementary Teaching I, students’ first assignment is to write an autobiography of their math experience. In that assignment, students discover when in their lives math started to become difficult, she said.
“I can tell right away from the stories in the autobiographies where there was a break in the journey,” Schinck-Mikel said. “It allows students to own up to the fact that people associate strong feelings toward the subject.”
Ian M. Lyons and Sian L. Beilock, professors in the psychology department at the University of Chicago, researched the emotional effects of math. In their study, they found math is associated with tension, apprehension and fear. Math itself is not painful, rather it is the anticipation of the dreaded event that causes the anxiety, the 2012 study said.
Mathematics department chair Joseph Borzellino has seen first-hand the anxiety students face when taking math courses, he said.
“It may be a manifestation of many different things — possibly, poor instruction while in elementary school, being left behind if their questions weren’t answered and the idea that there is always a right or wrong answer which really isn’t debatable,” Borzellino said.
Liberal studies junior Meredith Eddy plans to be a fourth grade teacher after graduation, she said. Eddy herself has faced math anxiety throughout her education, she said. Her experiences will help minimize math anxiety in her own students, she said.
Elementary school math came easy to Eddy. In high school, math began to make her anxious, she said. Eddy had to complete five quizzes each week on a program called Accelerated Math, she said. Students could not move on to the next quiz without passing the one before, she said. The students began falling behind, and the teacher kept moving ahead. Eddy and other students began falling behind and not understanding the current lessons because they were trying to finish up the previous lesson.
“The tests you were taking began to not align with what you were currently learning,” Eddy said. “It just caused anxiety and wasn’t helping me get better, but rather just a task that had to be done.”
An emphasis on better teaching college students how to teach math will decrease math anxiety, Schinck-Mikel said.
Educators must understand that a child’s mind is creative, and children will ask questions. A teacher must know math inside and out to explain a concept in different ways until the student understands, she said. If a teacher doesn’t know math completely, they will not be able to answer those questions, resulting in math anxiety in the students, she said.
“Knowing that they will work with students makes college students work harder,” Schinck-Mikel said. “I remind them often they will be working with children with minds that are constantly problem solving.”
Making math more of a community effort could also decrease math anxiety, Schinck-Mikel said. There should be an acceptance among the students and teacher that making mistakes is OK, she said. If young students feel comfortable with making mistakes, they will try harder, she said.
For example, negative numbers took mathematicians centuries to understand, why would teachers challenge their young students to understand it in one sitting, she said.
Eddy understands math anxiety can arise amongst young students if it is not properly taught, she said.
With the education she receives at Cal Poly, Eddy is trying to fully understand teaching mathematics.
The more comfortable she is with math, the less anxiety her students will have, she said.
“I don’t think I will place as much pressure on how you do on a certain test, but spend more time teaching the concept, emphasizing on getting students to understand the concept and improving with time,” Eddy said.
Cal Poly graduates are very well trained to go into the area of education, Borzellino said. Approximately 50 percent are interested in going into education at some level. But the mathematics department does not separate math majors between those who would like to teach and those who would not, he said. This allows every student to receive the full mathematical experience, he said.
“Students would be really lucky to have one of our graduates teaching them math,” Borzellino said. “So in that sense, I am very proud in our program, and what we teach our math majors here.”
Amanda Meneses contributed to this article.