TITLE:
Feeling Good about Teaching Mathematics: Addressing Anxiety amongst Pre-Service Teachers
AUTHORS:
Wendy Boyd, Alan Foster, Jubilee Smith, William Edgar Boyd
KEYWORDS:
Mathematics Anxiety; Teacher Education; Mathematical Self-Efficacy
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.5 No.4,
March
12,
2014
ABSTRACT: Research regarding
pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards teaching mathematics has revealed that
many pre-service teachers experience high levels of mathematics anxiety about
both the learning of mathematics and the teaching of the mathematics
curriculum. Little is known about the particular characteristics of pre-service
teachers that make them more likely to experience anxiety about mathematics in
the early years. Addressing anxiety towards mathematics and the teaching of
mathematics could effectively eliminate later problems in teaching. Teaching
mathematics confidently is associated with teachers’ beliefs about their
mathematical ability, which is their mathematical self-efficacy. This paper
reports on an investigation into the anxiety of first- year pre-service teachers towards their future teaching
of mathematics. 223 students enrolled in a first-year mathematics unit for birth to eight years, in
the Bachelor of Education of Early Childhood and Primary Education Courses
attributed their beliefs about mathematics to external—their past teachers—or internal factors: that one
is either good at mathematics or not. The findings highlight the need for
pre-service teacher’s anxiety about
mathematics to be addressed within the university education classroom context
so that pre-service teachers become capable and competent teachers of
mathematics.