Talk:Mathematical anxiety

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 August 2021 and 11 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Katiegoethals.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 03:37, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Header 1
Some refrences were added to show real psychology as someone put it on the talk page. Can someone check my referencing as I think someone else might check better my ref skills for plagerism and style thanks. I think I quoted enough and paraphrased some but would value your opinion too. Today was my first use of the ref tag but not my first use of referencing in written work.

I added a ref to facts about women mathematicians to suggest that the other statements about women in math are wrong in fact and should be taken out please. I also connected the barbie says comment to other related research and will add a cite to the gender and computing research in a moment. That will be my last edit for this evening I have math homework to get too ;)

suggestion for structure of page: start with defintion, topic general discussion, research areas, gender, age, effects on teaching.

where does "treatment" go? or is that done by us teachers of math.

add inspirational quotes as I think some students will need to be encouraged when they read this page for help.

Pierre, B.Math only

Thanks Millie I will help search for some research to help you tonight but you added quite a bit and some about age of mathematical work which is not really about this topic per say. While age of work might be good as a link for a page on John Nash, anxiety as I see it is something everyone has. Einstein said that his mathematics problems are the biggest. I can't reference this statement of Einstein but was going to place it on this page.

Pierre

I started editing this after someone I know started the page.

I have sources for the article, which I am collecting and will add to the page.

I saw the note that proposes the page be deleted due to it being "original research." It is not original research. Perhaps I stated things that were my opinion as facts, but I tried to couch everything in terms of possibilities, ie "it may be that..."

Specifically, speculation as to how the structure of academic math reseearch influences when people write their most important papers is frequently discussed in every math dep't I have visited. The answers are of course debatable and a matter of opinion, but the discussion itself (the issue of "is math a young person's game") is central to the culture of the math community.

It would be great if others added other possible explanations -- such as the idea that biologically people are more suited to do math at 25 than at 45 -- to the article.

--Millie

I think the subject is interesting, and if you are basing it on real psychological research and adding sources, that would be way better than deleting the article. The tag I put on is a prod, which means that you have five days to make the article wonderful before deletion happens. I'm putting this article on my watchlist, because I'm looking forward to reading your final version. -FisherQueen 13:49, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I know of the research but am rusty on the current sources since it has been a long time since I was in academic math. I did attend a conference (NSF Regional Geometry Conference on Algebraic Geometry at Amherst College, 1993) ages agp which had a track for math teachers and math anxiety was their main concern and they cited lots of research. I am not a pedagogy expert and can only come at it from the mathematicians' point of view, but I will get the cites for the statistics I actually quoted.

I stated "there are many emininent mathematicians who did work in older age" -- I do have examples of this but the ones I know of are perforce people I have run into or heard of, so if I listed them it would be a biased list. Can we find a source? The one person I know (know of -- I am not a personal friend and don't even know if she is still living) who got her PhD over age 40 is Joan Birman (Columbia) who is well-known in knot theory.

I removed phrasing which indicates my opinions (I hope) and tried to make the page reflect the diversity of opinion in the math community, so I am going to remove the "deletion proposal" for now. Feel free to put it back if sources don't materialize soon. I hope others (Peter Timusk?) will help find them. (I think -- from what he said on an unrelated list -- that Peter started this page.)

--Millie

Question: how do I cite a Wikipedia article of a slightly different title than the phrase used in the article text? I want "teachers of mathematics" to link to the "mathematics education" article.? -- Millie


 * Type , as I did in this edit. For future information, this (and more) is explained in Help:Link. Please ask if you need to know more, and keep up the good work! Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:30, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Common beliefs
I think this section needs to be rewritten. It reads like a blog post, lol. --Parasakthi ( பராசக்தி ) 17:04, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I believe in the phrase "math is a young man's game" the emphasis is placed on "young" rather than "man," as many mathematicians have believed that one does one's best work very early on, and then declines in sharpness and aptitude after the early or mid- twenties. 75.143.92.220 (talk) 03:44, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

whole article looks a lot better now. Thanks everyone. --Pete (talk) 04:11, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Header 3
This article reads like a scientific review article rather than an encyclopedia, what with all the nods to individual researchers and their experimental methods. If I'm not mistaken, the appropriate style would be to summarize results and cite the research, forgoing even the option to add "researchers have shown" at the beginning. (For example, "Hennig showed in his seminal 1998 work [x] that stimulated echo pathways contribute to echo amplitudes by applying a novel algorithm which," etc., should be written, "Stimulated echo pathways also contribute to echo amplitudes [x].") The organization could also use some work: why not go the route of "History of Math Anxiety Research"->"Effects of Math Anxiety on Students"->"Math Anxiety and Adults"->"Math Anxiety and Stereotype Threat"? Also, images? No one can think of a single picture? Pondrthis (talk) 08:26, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Combining/Updating information?
Sections of this article could be better served combining with other sections. I believe the first three sections in the article could be combined fairly easily. In the "In Schools" section, the last paragraph appears to be from a biased source. The linked website seems to be geared towards promoting and selling products related to math anxiety. The claims in that last paragraph should be backed by a reliable source or should be removed. A general edit over the entire article for fluidity and understanding would also be beneficial to the article. As it stands, some sentences/sections are very simple and do not flow very well. Brookeenglish (talk) 23:19, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Gatto material in check-POV sub-section
Former content:

As John Taylor Gatto has demonstrated at length, modern Western schools were deliberately designed during the late 19th century to create an environment which is ideal for fostering fear and anxiety, and for preventing or delaying learning.

Replacement content:

According to John Taylor Gatto, as expounded in several lengthy books, modern Western schools were deliberately designed during the late 19th century to create an environment which is ideal for fostering fear and anxiety, and for preventing or delaying learning. Many who are sympathetic to Gatto's thesis regard his position as unnecessarily extreme. Diane Ravitch, former assistant secretary of education during the George H.W. Bush administration, agrees with with Gatto up to a point, conceding that there is an element of social engineering (i.e. manufacture of compliant citizenry) in the construction of the American education system, which prioritizes conformance over learning.

My revised edition now seems incongruous in context.

Fixing that issue would involve fixing larger expository issues with this article that are far above my presently assumed pay grade.

For the meanwhile, some of the POV excess is now muted. &mdash; MaxEnt 22:03, 23 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Note that my ad hoc construal of Ravitch's sympathy for Gatto depends upon her directly quoted material being responsibly contextualized in the original source; I chose to view that article as responsible, based on it maintaining a high standard of coherent exposition throughout. She had to be agreeing with something about Ravitch or Ruenzel is a flake. &mdash; MaxEnt 22:11, 23 September 2020 (UTC)