Sabrina Colón, a freshman at the University of California, Merced, remembers when math first became a problem.
She says she's not a math person, but she was able to pass her high school math classes without too much trouble and get Cs. But in college, where she studies business, calculus is proving insurmountable.
It has caused him severe anxiety.
She doesn't want to go to class at all. She pretends to be sick or makes another excuse. It seems useless. Teachers just expect her to understand math right away, she says. Seeing other students who seem to be managing quite well makes her feel isolated.
There was another classmate who was struggling just as much as her, but he dropped out of class.
I hoped the feeling would go away. But she has gotten worse. When she thinks about math, her chest tightens. Sometimes, she prevents him from sleeping.
Earlier this year, I was supposed to take an exam. But when he came to class it was too much. “My body wouldn't let me open the door and walk in, so I just left,” she says. She never took the exam.
The fear or nervousness that occurs when doing or learning mathematics is, according to some, the most common form of education-related anxiety. Lately it has even been used to explain part of the differences in math scores between countries in the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which showed a drop in math scores in the U.S. These feelings can affect the extent to which students are willing to engage in math. When America is struggling to create more critical thinkers, this can hold some students back. So what does that mean for students with this anxiety?
Under pressure
According to Colleen Ganley, associate professor of developmental psychology at Florida State University, there are several theories about how math anxiety relates to performance. The most widely accepted model is called “reciprocal theory” and holds that students can find themselves in a loop where debilitating anxiety and poor math performance work together to hinder their learning, Ganley says. On the one hand, worrying about math can lead students to avoid it altogether, preventing them from improving. Meanwhile, poor performance in math (because it's a salient negative experience) causes anxiety, Ganley says. There's a little more evidence that poor performance more often fuels math anxiety than the other way around, although there's evidence that goes both ways, she adds.
Nervousness can mean, for students like Colon, that their mind is so busy worrying about whether they can do the math that their brain's working memory is consumed, interfering with their ability to do the math, says Susan Levine, a professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago.
The phenomenon is more common in students who are not particularly good at math, Levine says. But it can be more devastating for students who have great math potential, hurting their math grades the most. This is because these students tend to solve math problems using strategies that require more working memory, she adds. When nervous, these students resort to less advanced strategies. For example, he adds, they have found that math-anxious students are more likely to resort to counting on their fingers when solving arithmetic problems.
There is also evidence that women feel this anxiety more often than men, says Levine.
Looking for answers
In the case of anxiety, it can be difficult to generalize solutions.
In the classroom, researchers don't know much about what works for anxiety, Ganley says. That's why she focuses much of her work on the students themselves. What happens in the classroom will be important for math anxiety, but the importance of those things will depend on the specific student.
According to Ganley, practices that have been shown to inflame students' math anxiety include poor teacher support, poor student-teacher relationships, an overly competitive environment, and unsupportive classroom climates. Part of this has to do with students being nervous about making mistakes in math, she says.
Some researchers suggest that it may be helpful for students to reframe their feelings as emotion rather than anxiety or to journal about their anxiety before taking a test. But there is evidence that complicates the situation: a study shows that this approach it can even be harmful in students from 10 to 12 years old.
Some argue that instructional methods, such as timed tests, aggravate anxiety. But Ganley suggests the research doesn't support any general claims. While the evidence has not determined whether timed tests help or hurt, Ganley says he suspects that thoughtful use of timed tests may be helpful. For example, in his own instruction, Ganley had students complete timed tests and then grade themselves, without showing it to anyone else. Over time, Ganley entered student data and created graphs to show them their progress in math. That can be helpful when students have setbacks, he says. Thoughtless use, on the other hand, could worsen anxiety, especially if it encourages students' public comparison, he says.
But there are things instructors can do, some researchers say.
Instructional practices really matter, says Yasemin Copur-Gencturk, associate professor of teacher education at the University of Southern California. For many people, being skilled at math means being able to quickly arrive at a correct answer. But mastering mathematics goes beyond focusing excessively on answers: It requires students to develop complex thinking, she says. That means students should have more opportunities to develop reasoning and problem-solving skills, she says. Therefore, he encourages other teachers to not only focus on whether a student's solution is correct, but also to help them understand the process and thinking involved in arriving at the answer.
In many classrooms, teachers present a problem and then solve it immediately. Instead, he maintains, when teachers give their students the opportunity to address these problems first, it allows students to understand the mathematics they are learning. And it also helps teachers develop key knowledge and skills they need to teach mathematics. That's why teachers should give students a few minutes to try to solve the problem, observe them and listen to them, she says. This can reveal common struggles.
Levine, of Chicago, agrees. She advocates for more collaboration in math classes and more discussion about different ways to solve math problems. You can think a lot of good things when you get the answer wrong, she says. Even if a student makes a silly mistake, maybe the approach she took is really creative.
Copur-Gencturk argues that teacher preparation programs do not devote enough time to ensuring that future teachers have sufficient confidence and knowledge in mathematics and pedagogy to cultivate students' understanding and enjoyment of mathematics.
Ideally, teachers should be deeply familiar with mathematics and also with how to teach it. But alternative credentials are becoming more common. Teachers who enter the profession through alternative routes lack the content-specific expertise necessary for teaching, Copur-Gencturk says.
“So we just let them experiment with the students. I mean, to me, this is not fair to the students,” she says.
Colón, of Merced, attributes his own anxiety to a desire to avoid math, which he now finds painfully confusing, and a constant need to compare himself to other students.
When I asked him if he would take more math classes once he completed the requirements for his major, he gave a nervous laugh. “No,” she said.
He is seeing tutors, but they have not been helpful. “Honestly, I think I'm the problem when it comes to math,” Colón says.
But he still hopes he can learn the material. She also found that meditation helps her manage anxiety.
