Girls + female teachers = math anxiety

The nurturing of negative thinking.

Young students tend to model themselves after adults of the same sex, and having a female teacher who is anxious about math may reinforce the stereotype that boys are better at math than girls, explained Sian L. Beilock, an associate professor in psychology at the University of Chicago.

Beilock and colleagues studied 52 boys and 65 girls who in classes taught by 17 different teachers. Ninety percent of U.S. elementary school teachers are women, as were all of those in this study.

Student math ability was not related to teacher math anxiety at the start of the school year, the researchers report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

But by the end of the year, the more anxious teachers were about their own math skills, the more likely their female students — but not the boys — were to agree that "boys are good at math and girls are good at reading."

In addition, the girls who answered that way scored lower on math tests than either the classes' boys or the girls who had not developed a belief in the stereotype, the researchers found.

http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/girls-may-learn-math-282979.html

ugh.......I don't want to think about math. We're in the midst of the "Mulitplication Wars" over here. I hope to win the war, but I've been losing my fair share of battles!

Stephanie wrote:ugh.......I don't want to think about math. We're in the midst of the "Mulitplication Wars" over here. I hope to win the war, but I've been losing my fair share of battles!

Wait until you get into the gez-in-toos.

Stephanie wrote:ugh.......I don't want to think about math. We're in the midst of the "Mulitplication Wars" over here. I hope to win the war, but I've been losing my fair share of battles!

My oldest daughter has her degree in Math.