Understanding Maths Phobia

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Understanding Maths Phobia

• The purpose of this event is to provide a
  reflective space in which we as professionals
  from a great many different backgrounds can share
  our ideas and experiences with the aim of
  developing our ability to help maths phobic
  students to deal with the demands of their chosen
  degree.

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The format of the event

• A 25 minute presentation to stimulate and give
  direction to your thinking
• 1 hour of facilitated discussion in small groups.
  Each group is requested to make some notes.
• 30 minutes to eat the light supper provided and
  look at the notes of the other groups.

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What is the maths anxious experience?
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Empathy

• Sensing another persons private world as if it
  were ones own
• Being able to communicate this understanding
• verbally and non-verbally
• in a manner tuned to the others feelings

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Katy

• What do you learn from the video about the
  experience of maths anxiety?

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• At this point a video was shown a short armature
  video was shown.
• The video was made at Loughborough and shows one
  of their students talking about her experiences.
  She was happy for this to be shown to a small
  group of people but has not given permission for
  it to be put on the internet.
• She is a mature student in her mid twenties who
  first talks freely about her school experience
  and the development of her anxiety. She also
  tells us about the impact her maths anxiety had
  on her personal development. She then tells us
  about overcoming the effect of the anxiety,
  passing her GCSE maths and later the maths
  modules in her degree. She is clear about the
  coping strategies she has developed but tells us
  that the anxiety will never go away.
• The following slides give a good impression of
  what she said.

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Reflection
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Reflection

• Not understanding anxiety
• Getting behind more anxiety
• may seem simple to others humiliation
• Trying to control anxiety as well as learn maths
• I SHOULD be able to
• Anxiety ? panic attacks ? generalised fear

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• Coping strategies
• Deep breathing
• Thinking positively
• Little chunk at a time
• Build on past sense of achievement
• Determination I dont want these difficulties to
  hinder me further

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• People are not disturbed by things but by the
  views which they take of them
• Epictetus

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• Is it maths itself which is disturbing, or is it
  the way in which it is viewed?

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Common Misunderstandings

• Maths requires a good memory
• Maths is not creative
• Maths is always right or wrong
• There is a best way to do a maths problem
• Men are better than women
• Kogelman and Warren (1979) Mind Over Math,
  McGraw-Hill, New York, pp30 42

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Sources of misunderstandings and anxiety

• Teachers
• dont like maths
• Pass on their own attitudes
• teach it as they learnt it, badly
• As a closed, cold and uncreative subject
• fail to distinguish different learning styles
• Grasshoppers and inchworms
• ? belief that failure to understand is the result
  of a lack of effort or attention
• punish this bad behaviour.

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Compounding the problem

• Society
• Why do you have an accountant?
• Employers
• Perception of mathematically gifted
• 'strange' 'exceptionally intelligent'
  'frightening
• Lacking in empathy
• ? belief (especially in the world of the support
  services) that empathy ALONE is sufficient to
  teach maths to the maths phobic

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How do we help?
Maths tutors need to develop BOTH empathy and an
appreciation of maths as a creative and
satisfying subject