David Roye Math Anxiety Analysis

Back when I was a senior in high school, much like everyone else my age, I began to plan what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. The way the current education system is in place, the classes we take throughout our elementary and secondary educations are meant to give us a basis in a range of topics, but more importantly guide us toward which areas of studies would be best suited for our future pursuits. Unfortunately, this does not always work in the way it intends to. Using myself as an example, my high school experience should have shown me that going into mathematics would be the best path for me. Year after year, math had been my favorite subject, and the subject that I performed best in. From that, it would seem reasonable that

In “Math Anxiety: A Comparison of Social Work and Non-Social Work Students,” David Royse researches how social work students’ bad experiences with math bode poorly for the preparation for their field, which often involves taking statistics courses. He does some interesting background research into the history of mathematics anxiety, making the claim that “math anxiety is thought to be acquired rather than inherited” (Royse 271). Royse argues that social work students need a certain level of quantitative analysis skills, but many are incapable of overcoming their math anxiety in order to reach the minimum mathematics requirement for social work. Statistics for social workers is important so that they “can use research as a tool to improve their practice and to build knowledge for the profession” (Royse 271), but it is increasingly difficult to develop these skills when “most social work majors had not completed a college algebra class” (Royse 271). Since math anxiety is not an inherent trait, any acquired math anxiety can be reversed with better teaching, in particular for social work students that need to use mathematics in their studies. Social work majors are just as much victims of the vicious cycle of math anxiety as elementary education majors, but instead of continuing the cycle through

In “Math Anxiety: Personal, Educational, and Cognitive Consequences,” Mark H. Ashcraft goes into an analysis of what he’s seen about mathematics anxiety over the past 30 years. His article focuses on general background information about the history of mathematics anxiety, and his examples show how math has taken a toll on people emotionally. He details examples of times when a participant in a lab study involving got so worked up that she “eventually [became] so distraught that she burst into tears” (Ashcraft 181). The math that the participant had to experience was nothing more than simple arithmetic, which shows the level that math effects people emotionally. It is safe to assume that the level of difficulty of the math alone would not be enough to elicit such an intense reaction, which means that other negative experiences must be in effect. Whether it be the fear of being labelled as dumb for not being able to do math—which Lia relates to—or the memories of math class in grade school, people carry this math anxiety with them. Ashcraft goes on to place some of the blame on how “U.S. culture abounds with attitudes that foster math anxiety: Math is thought to be inherently difficult (as Barbie dolls used to say, ‘Math class is hard’)” (Ashcraft 181). People who have suffered from math anxiety—victims of the