Math-Anxiety Study Found Debatable by Media and Public Online

January 29, 2010 

The recent publication of the four-page academic article, "Female Teachers’ Math Anxiety Affects Girls’ Math Achievement" (PNAS, January 25, 2010), has caught the attention of the media and raised some eyebrows. 

University of Chicago researchers (Sian L. Beilock, Elizabeth A. Gunderson, Gerardo Ramirez, and Susan C. Levine) reported that first- and second-grade girls are vulnerable to a loss of confidence in doing mathematics when their female teachers are anxious about doing mathematics. Boys remain unaffected by teachers' emotional states regarding arithmetic. 

65 girls, 52 boys, and 17 female teachers were included in the study population. The 12 first-grade teachers and 5 second-grade teachers, who came from five public elementary schools in a large mid-western school district, averaged 13 years of teaching. There were no male teachers under scrutiny in the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation.

The study neglected to address several key questions such as how much lower the math score of the anxious girls' were after a year of instruction from math-nervous teachers than the scores of girls with math-confident teachers, and whether it was significant. 

The teachers' math knowledge was assessed using the Elementary Number Concepts and Operations subtest of the Content Knowledge for Teaching Mathematics measure. According to the study, the subtest measures teachers’ facility in using "mathematics knowledge for classroom teaching, including the ability to explain mathematical rules, assess the validity of unusual algorithms produced by students, and illustrate mathematical equations using diagrams or word problems. The content areas included addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division with whole numbers and fractions." The subtest was composed of 26 multiple-choice questions.

Their "math anxiety" was assessed using the condensed version of the Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (MARS). Originally a 98-question survey developed in 1972, MARS was condensed to a 30-item test in 2003. Teachers were asked how anxious they became when reading a cash register receipt after buying something and studying for a math test. Responses were recorded on a scale of 1 (low anxiety) to 5 (high).

A plethora of media outlets covered this story, but failed to adequately question its validity.

An AP Science story noted the size of the study population, but neglected to mention the number of female teachers in the study. 

An LA Times story noted the test score differences between the boys and the girls, but then left open the issue of what the gap (107.8 and 102.5) means. The story did, however, indicate that the researchers were unsure how teachers who are unnerved by first and second-grade arithmetic betrayed their anxiety to their pupils—or how the pupils, who were 6-8 years old, sensed the so-called math anxiety.

Real scrutiny of the researchers' methods came from online commenters and bloggers.  

In a Knight Science Journalism Tracker piece, Charlie Petit notes, "As there were no male teachers in the study, a variable has been left out of this study, leading to ambiguity in the permutations of possible causes and effects."   

One commenter on the Chicago Tribune coverage wrote, "So, why is only one person on this comment board questioning the validity of this study? They only spoke to 17 women. Reliable? I think not."

Another said, "Proximity does not prove causation. This is not a study; this is conjecture."

A commenter on the USA Today piece said, "This 'study' has a far too small sampling to be credible. Seventeen teachers and 117 students does not make a reliable study. No respectable researcher would even publish these 'findings" with such a small sampling. I am shocked the NAS even published this."

Another wrote, "This is another dumb story-and shame on the Researchers at the University of Chicago for being stupid. This is a great lesson on "how to lead a child's answer." What were they expecting??? Ask ANY girl who does poorly at math if they think boys are better at math than girls and they will tell you "yes". You are allowing that child to make an excuse. I'm not perfect. But with my 4 kids, I do not allow gender to come into play when it comes to their abilities, strengths, weaknesses, hopes, dreams, etc. That is unacceptable."

The online response included voices from a wide range of backgrounds. Several people, describing themselves as educators, took opposing views to the study's results. 

One commenter on the AP Science coverage said, "I spent a career teaching mostly gifted and talented high school chemistry and physics. Each year I also had to teach some remedial algebra and geometry because the kids had forgotten some things. My experience at that level was that the girls did as well as the boys—and I usually had more girls in those classes than boys. I saw nothing to suggest that boys were inherently better able to learn math skills than girls. And if we had the amount of math required in advanced foreign countries, we wouldn't be worried about teachers being nervous with elementary school level math." 

Another wrote, "After studying spatial ability and movement difference for a large number of male and female subjects between 5 years and 80 years of age for a number of years while working at UCONN, the results of these experiments resulted in wide difference between males and females. Males were found to be innately more capable to identify the correct direction of an object by visual observation when taking the spatial test we developed for this experimentation."

Other commenters used the study as evidence of problems in the U.S. education system. 

On the USA Today piece, one wrote, "Our children are being taught math for eight years primarily by people who have spent their whole lives avoiding math classes. The high school teachers really have their work cut out for them."

Another on that same page said, "Did anyone ever consider that those that are good at math don't become teachers, so we have only those with poorer math skills teaching our kids math"

For more coverage, check out articles in Telegraph, Times of India, and World Mag. The original University of Chicago press release can be found here.