Math Anxiety Research Paper

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macbeth is visited by three witches who tell him it is his destiny to become king, and him and his wife, Lady Macbeth, plot to kill King Duncan in order to fulfill that destiny. Once the king is assassinated, both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth each go mentally insane in their own ways, and not in the way that the stereotype of their gender typically states. Each of the Macbeths’s traits do not match the stereotypical traits of males and females, and this causes an extreme amount of confusion for both of them. Gender stereotyping can lead to uncertainty of one’s true identity in society.

Evidently, as negative gender stereotypes make women less interested in STEM and hinder their performances in STEM fields, women are dissuaded from pursuing educational or career options in STEM fields. A study by a group of researchers Cundiff et al. (2012) found that women with stronger gender–science stereotypes had weaker science identification and, in turn, had weaker science career aspirations ( p.550). Hence, gender stereotypes often dictate women to not pursue any career aspiration in STEM. A group of researchers from Cornell University, Ellis, Fosdick, and Rasmussen (2015) analyzed that while controlling for academic preparedness, career intentions, and instruction, a woman is 1.5 times more likely than men to be discouraged from continuing calculus and further pursuing STEM fields for academics and professional fields. They further analyzed that such the main factor behind such dissuasion is lack of math confidence instead of their ability in math (para

In Mathematical Mindsets by Jo Boaler, current and future educators learn all about the different outlooks children have on math and ways their adult piers put unknowingly force that upon them. The author, Joe Boaler, is a mathematical teacher who has had the opportunity of teaching elementary students. She has a doctorate degree from Stanford and has done studies of her own classroom taking a deeper look into how math is most effective in the classroom. Americans tend to have a skewed perspective that math consists solely of equations and rules that must be followed (Boaler 34). Kids are praised for being smart and gifted in math when in fact “…there is no such thing as a ‘math brain’ or a math gift’ as many believe. No one is born know math, and no one is born lacking to ability to learn math” (Boaler 6). This is important to keep in mind as future educators. Every single student that walks through the door is

In “Is Your Child Ready For College Math?” the author builds an argument that many students may not be prepared with the mathematics skills to be college or career ready. The author uses reasons such as the fact that students may have taken insufficient mathematics courses; that they may have taken the wrong courses, or that students have not mastered the skills required to be college and/or career ready. The author provides supporting evidence from the text and compelling word choices to strengthen the logic and persuasiveness of his argument.

A small amount of anxiety can be a good thing. A lot of anxiety is when it becomes a problem. “The dividing line is when the fear becomes so great that it causes a lot of distress and/or it makes the person not able to do certain things” says Dr. Bridget Walker. Having a constant or persistent feeling of fear and distress, is known as anxiety. In the past, people with mental disorders have been misunderstood and poorly treated. During, times in ancient Greece, many societies connected mental disorders to punishments from the gods or being possessed by demons. But, people still tried to find a more scientific explanation. No matter the cause, if not properly cared for, anxiety can lead to serious problems and disorders.

"Without mathematics, there's nothing you can do. Everything around you is mathematics. Everything around you is numbers."~Shakuntala Devi. In "Teaching Kids Why Math Matters", Cindy Donaldson builds an argument that math will be in our lives for as long as we know it. The author presents examples such as personal reasons to learn math, patriotic reasons to learn math, and practical reasons to learn math so she can strengthen the logic and persuasiveness of her argument.

The era in which men need to fight and women need to breed has already faded. We should made the boundary between men and women more obscure especially in their young age and more focused on individuals. The logic behind is to maximize the advantage of individual and give “outliers” equal chance as others. Not all the boy like to play sports. The evidence of Walker shows that some boys might have interests over the so called “girlish stuff”. They could like reading over gaming, enjoy flower rather than basketball, and engage in emotional fiction rather than military magazine. However, under the uniformed education, Walker’s boy was certainly was repulsed. The outliers do not have the right to choose and to be respected (Walker). If the concept of “reading is girlish stuff” is removed, Walker’s boy definitely would not question his own interests and even feel natural to pursuit his hobbies. Also, the recent trends shows that the mathematic and scientific subjects are not something exclusive for boys. Some girls can perform far more well than boys in the scientific field. However, the educational system still stubbornly recognized female students as artistic and literary. According to the statistic of Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT), famous tech school which encourage female scientists, only 35 percent of students who study in scientific field are female.

Social experiences play a very important role for people and these experiences shape people's thinking and personalities in the same time. People who influenced by the social experiences will think, make decisions and even judge others by the same way, this is so-called social stereotype. These stereotypes make a lot of negative impact and pleasure for the individuals in the group, especially for females. They are the biggest victims of these social stereotypes. Leslie Bell points out this issue in her “Selections From Hard to Get: Twenty-Something women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom”. In her paper, she points out the social stereotypes about female and show how these stereotypes

As schools started to accept women, all classes were available for anyone to take; specifically meaning this gave women the choice to choose what classes they want to be enrolled into, rather than automatically being placed into home economics because it was “suitable for women.” Women could actually explore the realm of math and science which was usually a class for men. “Between 1987 and 1997, the percentage of women taking AP calculus increased by 6% and the percentage taking AP physics increased by 10%” (Math). This shows how women wanted to pursue math as well as science; they just never had the chance to. Women would stray away from those classes because there was a widely held stereotype that girls didn’t like math and science, so when wanting to pursue science or math, girls would feel discouraged because it wasn’t the “girly” option to

I want you to picture a firefighter in your head. I am willing to bet you pictured a male firefighter. We often place certain jobs, skills, and traits with gender. We gain this bias from our culture, and from other people unconsciously affecting our dispositions. How Teacher Biases Can Sway Girls From Math and Science by Clair Cain Miller is an article about how girls are under represented in math and science jobs, one of the fastest growing and highest paying fields. Miller wrote about how girls are under represented in these subjects, and how it is a result of the unconscious teacher bias, and overall discouragement from their surroundings. This article connects with the class in dealing with teacher bias

Most people associate the arts and humanities field with femininity and the field of Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths and Medicine (STEMM) with masculinity (Hill et al, 2010). Results from the TISME project also suggest most young females perceive STEMM careers as masculine (Archer et al., 2013). The Aspire report (2013) also reported similar findings, where only 12% of Year 8 girls aspired to have a career in STEMM but a staggering 64% of Year 8 girls was interested in an Arts career. Furthermore in a survey of 23,000 12-15 year old girls who wants to study a more “academic subject”, it was found girls are less confidence in their ability than boys, regardless of the difference in their conceptual abilities. Statistics from WISE 2012

On Thursday October 22, I went with Sarah Pritt to recruit participants for her math-science anxiety research project. Sarah is a graduate student here at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, who is part of Dr. Roehrich’s research group. She hoped to recruit male participants who are planning on teaching math to elementary students. Last time the study was run, the results were significant, representing that math and science anxiety does exist and gender plays a role. However, this time around they hoped to add more men to their population size in order to strengthen the results. We went to a classroom that was located in Stright Hall. Sarah began by introducing herself to the four men in the class, and read a blurb about what her study was about. She was able to gather four men that were interested in participating in the study. It was interesting observing the processes of recruiting potential participants for a study. Additionally I read Paige Morrison’s proposal for the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Institutional Review Board. It consisted of many different components, including the purpose of the study, the hypothesis, tests that would be used, for example the readiness to change questionnaire (RTCQ) and the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification

Do you have anxiety? If so do you know the effective treatment? The Psychologists at the American Psychological Association in Washington D.C. have recently published an online article called Anxiety Disorders and effective Treatment, which can be found at http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/anxiety-treatment.aspx. This Article focuses on the types of anxieties that there are and there treatments. The anxieties they focus on are General Anxiety, Panic Disorder, Phobias, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder.

My name is Michael as you know, today I am going discuss about why people hate math. Why student hate math, Is math important in our life, good and bad points of math. My question is why people hate math????? Even me myself doesn’t like math. Do we need math and what benefit we get when we are smart at math? The benefits are people will be proud of you.

Picture this, there is a young girl standing in a room waiting for something. What is she waiting for. Often times people conclude that she is waiting for a man. Why? Because women being “helpless” and needing a man to take care of her is a stereotype. Throughout history, many gender roles have been placed upon women. Women are told to be wives and mothers and to take care of the home. Women are shown to be nurturing and are told to be “good” girls or else they would be punished. All of these, plus others like, being inferior, passive, less intelligent, emotional, weak, and maintaining a lower social position are all stereotypes. By definition a stereotype ”is a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of