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Re: [Phys-L] Timed Tests and the Development of Math Anxiety



Thank you for such lucid with references response.

Zeke Kossover



________________________________
From: Ze'ev Wurman <zeev@ieee.org>
To: Phys-L@Phys-L.org
Sent: Tuesday, July 3, 2012 5:36 PM
Subject: Re: [Phys-L] Timed Tests and the Development of Math Anxiety

Please be very careful when using any "research" quoted by Jo Boaler, the author of this opinion(!) piece. She has a record of cherry picking the data in support of her theses, and this opinion piece seems no different.

Specifically, there are at least two issues involved: (a) what is the impact of math anxiety on variety of types of students, and (b) what causes math anxiety. (That "math anxiety" exists seems to have been more or less settled, although no such thing has been settled relative to anything like "physics anxiety." Further, math anxiety seems *different* from generic anxiety.)  While there has been, indeed, some progress in understanding the nature of math anxiety and its impacts on people , there has been no progress on determining the cause of math anxiety.

Boaler seems quite intentionally confounding the two issues. So, for example, she writes that "/[u]ntil recently, we have not known the _causes _of math anxiety _and how it affects _the brain, but the introduction of brain-imaging research has given us new and important evidence./" Yet if one bothers to read the underlying research she quotes in her piece, it says nothing about the causes of anxiety. In fact, Mark Ashcraft (2002, the first reference she gives) says that "/causes of math anxiety are undetermined/"; the recent Stanford paper she offers as her other reference clearly says "/[m]ath anxiety has a detrimental impact on an individual's long-term professional success, but its neurodevelopmental origins are unknown/."

The reason Boaler confounds the nature of math anxiety and its possible causes is simple. She is on a crusade to eliminate timed-testing and to fight the call for arithmetical fluency that is voiced by the Common Core standard. Research that shows frequent timed testing, particularly low-stress one, is beneficial to developing math fluency and actually lowers math anxiety is ignored by Boaler (Knowless 2010, Sayeski & Paulsen 2010, NMAP 2008 p. 6-64 et seq., Gersten et al. 2009). Even Sian Beiloc, another research Boaler mentions supposedly in support of her thesis says that "/[a]nother [strategy] is to train students to become more accustomed to working under pressure by having them take timed practice tests/". (Cavanagh 2007)

Yet another example of her bias is the way she overstresses the frequency of math anxiety in girls: " /[m]ath anxiety affects about 50 percent of the U.S. population and more women than men./" One is left with the impression of a significant gender issue, yet the same Mark Ashcraft she has already misrepresented above says that "/the gender difference [of math anxiety incidence] is rather small./"

Boaler is peddling ideology under the cover of research. Caveat emptor.

Ze'ev

Refs:

- Cavanagh, Sean, 'Math Anxiety' Confuses the Equation for Students. Education Week, February 16, 2007. http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2007/02/21/ew_math.html
- Gersten, Russel, et al., A Meta-analysis of Mathematics Instructional Interventions for Students with Learning Disabilities: Technical Report. Instructional Research Group, 2009. http://www.inresg.org/math_tech_paper.pdf
- Knowles, Nelly P.,The relationship between timed drill practice and the increase of automaticity of basic multiplication facts for regular education sixth graders. PhD dissertation, 2010. http://gradworks.umi.com/34/27/3427303.html
- National Mathematics Advisory Panel, Chapter 6 - Report of the Task Group on Instructional Practices, U.S. Department of Education: Washington, DC, 2008. http://www2.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/mathpanel/report/instructional-practices.pdf
- Sayeski, K.L., Paulsen, K. J., Mathematics Reform Curricula and Special Education: Identifying Intersections and Implications for Practice. Interventions in School and Clinic, 64(1), p. 13-21, 2010

On 7/3/2012 9:41 AM, John Clement wrote:
<http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/07/03/36boaler.h31.html?tkn=MMZFb%2B
zAGHAB3Z1s469g6O2PaPiAXGcbQ58t&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2>

This article refers to some very firm research which shows that timed
testing is one of the reasons why students have difficulty with and hate
math.  But notice that repeated extremely stressful situations have bad
effects.  Small amounts of stress may be beneficial, but I do not know where
the threshold lies.  Of course this relates to corporal punishment which is
also a stressful situation which sends the wrong message.  But again, some
state standards imply that timed testing is needed.  They don't bother to
look at research.

I think that the conventional method of teaching physics also produces
fairly high stress levels because most students find the subject to be
incomprehensible.  Then of course there is the problem of tests with a time
limit which may be too short for some students.  Other research has shown
that students who are LD benefit greatly from extended time, while "normal"
students do not.  So giving anyone extended time is a good practice.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


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_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@mail.phys-l.org
http://www.phys-l.org/mailman/listinfo/phys-l