> Students often discussed the role that their teachers and parents played in their development of maths anxiety. Primary-aged children referred to instances where they had been confused by different teaching methods, while secondary students commented on poor interpersonal relations.
For the teaching methods, I'll defer to A Mathematician's Lament by Lockhart. Kids are taught to memorize and often by teachers (esp in grade school) who don't understand the math. When I got my teaching credentials in secondary mathematics, one of the points driven home was that a large factor that led many grade school teachers to avoid secondary (high school) was fear of the math.
Case: my daughter's 7th grade teacher taught the rules of exponents. Part of it, he said anything to the zeroth power is 1 and anything to the oneth power is itself and nobody knows why, it is just one of those things. Fast forward a year or two, and kids are lucky to remember a factiod right. A simple pattern matching exercise would have helped kids rediscover the rule if needed.
For the teaching methods, I'll defer to A Mathematician's Lament by Lockhart. Kids are taught to memorize and often by teachers (esp in grade school) who don't understand the math. When I got my teaching credentials in secondary mathematics, one of the points driven home was that a large factor that led many grade school teachers to avoid secondary (high school) was fear of the math.
Case: my daughter's 7th grade teacher taught the rules of exponents. Part of it, he said anything to the zeroth power is 1 and anything to the oneth power is itself and nobody knows why, it is just one of those things. Fast forward a year or two, and kids are lucky to remember a factiod right. A simple pattern matching exercise would have helped kids rediscover the rule if needed.