Female Teachers and Female Students’ Math Anxiety, Part 2
Recently, I posted some thoughts here and at Equality 101 about a study regarding female teachers passing their anxiety toward math to their female students, and my thoughts were met with some dispute, both by Veronica at Girl w/Pen! and in the comments of my post. Makomk in the comments of my post and Veronica both point out that the number of male teachers is so low compared to the number of female teachers that, from a researcher’s perspective, it doesn’t really matter if there weren’t any male teachers. I can’t refute this; the majority of our young female students are being taught by female teachers. In fact, I had thought of that the first time I saw the study, but thought it important to highlight the fact that there were no male teachers included, even though male grade school teachers do exist. While I maintain that it would be interesting to see if male teachers pass on subject anxiety to their male students, I will concede that, for the purposes of this particular study, it is unimportant.
However, I still have a few problems with the research itself, and the tone of the article. Let’s start with the research.
Between the three of the articles cited in my last post (Chicago Public Radio, Yahoo News, and the LA Times), the numbers don’t add up. I could not listen to the article, but in the written summary, CPR cites 17 teachers were studied, but does not disclose the number of students. The Yahoo News article cites 17 teachers along with 52 boys and 65 girls. The LA Times article cites 7 teachers and 117 students, but does not differentiate between boys and girls.
I suppose this is a lesson in checking multiple sources to get the full picture. Was it 7 teachers or 17? Both are impossibly small samples compared to the number of grade school teachers out there, and are restricted to one region of the country – the Midwest. How do we know if this is a national or regional issue? I’d venture to say that most teachers who are educated in the Midwest stay in the Midwest to teach. I know this was the case with my teacher ed program. (This is not to say that teachers are “homebodies” or anything like that, but since each state has its own certification requirements, it is often difficult to move between states.) Perhaps the problem, then, is with Midwestern teacher ed programs.
The number of students could also show a source of bias. If we are, indeed, talking about the larger sample of 17 teachers, this puts approximately 7 students per teacher in the study. If we are talking about the smaller sample of 7 teachers, this puts approximately 17 students per teacher. I don’t know about you, but I have very rarely experienced class sizes like these. As a researcher myself, I know that researchers must provide informed consent to the parents or guardians of any minors in a study, and that the parents or guardians have every right not to allow their child to be included in a study. Perhaps, then, this low number of student-participants is because only parents who were actually concerned about their students’ level of math anxiety agreed to have their children participate. Who knows, then, if the parents talked about math more at home, then, because they were made aware of the possibility of math anxiety by simply reading and signing the consent forms. I know that’s a stretch, but it isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
Regardless, I do think this study could have benefitted from a larger sample of teachers and students, more representative of a real, full classroom, and in several different regions across the nation.
Research aside, I still think the tone of these articles – maybe not the full study, I have not seen it printed in full yet – paint women in a bad light. First, why did these researchers decide to refer to this problem as “math anxiety?” This hearkens back to the 1950’s and earlier when women were wrongly institutionalized for “hysteria” and “anxiety.” Why not call it “discomfort” or “a lack of confidence in their math skills?” What would it be called if male teachers were being studied? I bet it wouldn’t be called anxiety.
Also, that the Yahoo News article goes on to quote Janet S. Hyde, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison – not an author of the study – as saying:
“[Math anxiety] keeps girls and women out of a lot of careers, particularly high-prestige, lucrative careers in science and technology,” she said.
This just screams “It is the fault of women as a gender that they do not get high-prestige, high paying jobs.” Clearly, according to this article, we should not be blaming the glass ceiling or gender discrimination in the work place for being unable to get these jobs; it is our own fault, because we “make it acceptable” (quoted from the LA Times article) for women teachers to hate math and pass that on to their female students. While I do agree that this is a vicious cycle that needs to be stopped, and, yes, a fear of math may keep women out of math-related fields, it seems that this study allows us to imply things about women and math that excuse the rest of the problems in the system.
But what do I know? I’m just an English teacher. 🙂
The article is available free online.
The Methods section cites 17 female teachers (12 1st grade, 5 2nd grade) in 5 public elementary schools in a large midwestern school district. Authors cite that women make up over 90% of elementary teachers in the USA. Considering that the authors are from Chicago, it’s good to guess that it’s one of the districts near Chicago, if not Chicago itself. As for the students: 117 students (65 girls and 52 boys) participated.
Yes, I would have loved to see a higher number of participants and schools included, but the results seem to be statistically accurate. Representative of the entire country? Not sure about that. But as a study to give us a peek at just one factor that may be impacting girls’ confidence in math? Yes.
As for the media’s play…That’s a whole other story.
As for using anxiety…Looking at their citations, it seems to be a common term in the literature.
I feel a bit uncomfortable with that study, too. However, I think that the study shows that stereotypes (such as this long-standing one of girl not excelling in math) are so reinforced by media and science that they become internalized. A young girl is told that girls generally don’t succeed at math, whether from the media or her teacher…so then what does that girl do? Because of that constant reminder, she may push math aside and focus on other subjects that girls are “supposed” to be good at, i.e. English.
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