Beilock 2010 Math Anxiety

Question 1

Q1: The study of teachers math anxiety found that teachers math anxiety is related to

Answer 1

• girls’ math achievement

they did not measure kids’ anxiety

Question 2

Q2: Writing about testing worries immediately after taking a test has been shown to

Answer 2

improves test performance

Question 3

Q3: According to the findings of Ramirez and Beilack (2011), if you want to improve your performance on the final, what should you do immediately prior to taking the exam

Answer 3

write about your exam-related worries

Question 4

Q4: To which group will the unrelated writing group be most similar?

Answer 4

control group

Question 5

What are the key concepts in what we read?

Answer 5

teachers, math anxiety, teacher anxiety

Question 6

What question(s) did the author(s) set out to answer?

Answer 6

What happens when people high in math anxiety are responsible for teaching childrens math?

Question 7

How did the author(s) go about studying their research question(s)?

Answer 7

Method

• N = 17 1st and 2nd grade teachers (all female)
• N = 117 Ss
• Measures
  
  • TEACHERS’ math anxiety
  • At the beginning and end of the year
    
    • Ss math achievement
    • Ss gender ability beliefs (i.e. drawing following gender-neutral stories)
      
      • Draw a picture of someone good at math (ppl tend to draw a man)

Question 8

What did they find at the beginning of the school year?

Answer 8

At the beginning of the school year, TEACHERS anxiety was not related to
- Ss math achievement
- Ss gender ability beliefs

Question 9

What did they find at the end of the school year?

Answer 9

• At the end of the school year, the more anxious the teacher:
  
  • The lower girls’ math achievement (not boys)
  • The more likely girls were to endorse gender role stereotypes (not boys) - girls will believe that boys are better at math if they have a math-anxious teacher
• At the end of the school year, the girls who endorsed gender stereotypes
  
  • Had lower math achievement than girls who didn’t AND
  • had lower math achievement than all boys

Question 10

Female T’s anxieties relate to girls’ math achievement via girls’ belief about who is good at math

Answer 10

• Teachers’ math anxiety → Girls’ Math Achievement
• Teacher math anxiety → Gender ability beliefs → Girls math achievement ( when we have the gender ability beliefs as a mediator, the effect of teacher math anxiety is NOT SIGNIFICANT)

Question 11

Why should we care?

Answer 11

• We want all students to perform well in math
• Even as parents, you’re “help giving behavior” will bleed on to your kids and make them math anxious

Question 12

Hypotheses (will be supported by results)

Answer 12

1. The more math anxiety a female teacher has, the lower her student’s math achievement will be (anxiety measured for teacher)
2. The relation will only hold for girls
   - Children are more likely to emulate attitudes of the same gender vs. other gender adults
3. Traditional academic gender stereotypes account for the relationship