As the United States falls farther behind other countries in standardized math assessments, the author seeks to understand why U.S. students perform so poorly. One of the possible explanations to U.S. students' poor math performance may be math anxiety. However, math anxiety in elementary school children is a neglected area in the research. The…

This submission contains the Proceedings of the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group (CMESG), held at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec June 2-6. The CMESG is a group of mathematicians and mathematics educators who meet annually to discuss mathematics education issues at all levels of learning. The aims of the…

Elementary pre-service teachers report high levels of mathematics anxiety (MA), but the construct less widely addressed is their mathematics teaching anxiety (MTA). This study investigated the frequency with which MA stemming from prior experiences leads to MTA. Fifty-three elementary pre-service teachers' written reflections were analyzed, using…

Engaging successfully in the modern technological society requires a command of mathematics. Hence, successfully engaging with mathematics has social, economic and political implications. There has been a history over a long period of time of significant numbers of people not forming productive relationships with learning mathematics. Failure in…

This study explored the nature of mathematics anxiety in a sample of 106 ethnically and linguistically diverse first-grade students. Although much is known about mathematics anxiety in older children and adults, little is known about when mathematics anxiety first emerges or its characteristics in young children. Results from exploratory factor…

Since most elementary school teachers do not hold a degree in mathematics, teaching math may be a daunting task for some. Following are a few techniques to help make teaching and learning math easier and less stressful. First, know that math is a difficult subject to teach--even for math teachers. The subject matter itself is challenging. Second,…

This study reported the results of a 3-month quasi-experimental study that determined the effectiveness of an online visual and interactive technological tool on sixth grade students' mathematics performance, math anxiety and attitudes towards math. There were 155 sixth grade students from a middle school in the North Texas area who participated…

Although behavioral difficulties are well documented in reading disabilities, little is known about the relationship between math ability and internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Here, we use standardized measures to investigate the relation among early math ability, math anxiety, and internalizing and externalizing behaviors in a group of…

Math education in the United States remains resistant to systemic change, and our country pays the price. Stemhagen's article "Democracy and School Math" further confirms this trend. Despite repeated calls for reform, decades of research on how people learn, millions of dollars invested in teacher professional development, and years of…

Over the last 50 years, there has been ample research dedicated to mathematics anxiety in contexts of teaching and learning. However, there has been less attention focused on pre-service teachers' anxieties about teaching mathematics in classroom settings. This study analyzed pre-service teachers' reflections at the conclusion of an elementary…

This study used data from the Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning project, which involved data on the academic performance of more than 90,000 New Zealand students in six subjects (i.e. reading, writing and mathematics in two languages). Two sub-samples of this dataset were included for detailed re-analysis to test the general applicability…

The purpose of this study was to address the gap in research regarding the use of cooperative learning instructional methods in college mathematics courses to prepare future teachers. Bruner's constructivist theory and social interdependence theory guided this study. The research questions focused on the effects of the use of cooperative learning…

Student primary teachers tend to have pervasive and frequently severe negative attitudes, low mathematics self-efficacy beliefs, and anxiety of mathematics that are more extreme than those of any other undergraduate student group. If unaddressed, such mathematics aversion will be carried into primary school classrooms, presenting a tangible and…

We investigate mathematics anxiety amongst education majors currently enrolled as pre-service teachers in special education, deaf and hard of hearing, early childhood and elementary education. The impact of a compulsory freshmen content course and sophomore methodology course on mathematics anxiety for each education major was studied over a two…

This study surveyed 82 preservice elementary teachers using items from an instrument designed to predict student achievement based on a teacher's mathematics knowledge for teaching (MKT) in numbers and operations concepts. Additional mathematics beliefs items asked participants to rate their level of agreement with math myths and math anxiety…