Abstract
Teachers are strong role models for their pupils, especially at the beginning of education. This also holds true for math: If teachers feel anxious about math, the consequences on the mathematical education of their pupils is detrimental. Previous studies have shown that (future) elementary school teachers have higher levels of math anxiety than most people studying other subjects. Here, we set out to conceptually replicate these findings (e.g., meta-analysis by Hembree, 1990, https://doi.org/10.2307/749455) by comparing math anxiety levels of pre-service and in-service German and Belgian elementary school teachers to a reference group of German university students from various fields of study. Moreover, we questioned this finding by asking which elementary school teachers experience math anxiety, considering gender, specialization, and experience, and investigated how math anxiety relates to teaching attitudes towards math. We replicated the previous finding by showing that female elementary school teachers have a higher level of math anxiety as compared to other female students. Importantly, female elementary school teachers without math specialization indeed had higher levels of math anxiety than female students from other fields and almost a quarter of them experience critical math anxiety. In contrast, female elementary school teachers with math specialization did not show an increased level of math anxiety as compared to the reference sample. Considering that not only these but all teachers, regardless of specialization, teach math in elementary school in the investigated educational systems, the math anxiety of elementary school teachers is a potential problem for their pupils’ math attitudes and learning.
Highlights
The German teachers were categorized by whether they specialized in mathematics during their teacher education (n = 75) or not (n = 56) and the Belgian teachers by whether they specialized in mathematics during their secondary school education (n = 78) or not (n = 49)
We decided to run the statistical analysis on female teachers only
The current study investigated math anxiety of elementary school teachers to replicate the higher levels of math anxiety found for teachers as compared to a reference sample, to identify which teachers are affected, and to disclose how math anxiety relates to their teaching attitudes
Summary
The samples of pre-service and in-service elementary school teachers consisted of German teachers and French-speak ing Belgian teachers. German university students who studied various subjects other than elementary school educa tion were recruited via internal e-mail within the University of Tuebingen. The eligibility for the reference sample was conferred by German native speaker status, while teachers in elementary school were considered as having a language level (in German/French) high enough to respond to the survey. The enjoyment of teaching math (“I like teaching math.”) and the ease of teaching math (“Teaching math is easy for me.”) were assessed on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = not at all, 5 = absolutely; additional option: not yet taught) These items were originally formulated in German for the purpose of this study. The material for assessing math anxiety and teaching attitudes can be found in the Open Material
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