Why Do I Have To Teach Mathematics

Do I Have to Teach Math? Early Childhood Pre-Service Teachers’ Fears of Teaching Mathematics, is a research article written three researches from Illinois Sate University. Alan B. Bates, Nancy I. Latham, and Jin-ah Kim focused their study on indentifying by pre-service teachers their fears towards mathematics. These researchers also looked for the source of those specific fears as well as for explanation provided by the participants. As “mathematics” is a polarizing word for many people, very often it evokes numerous personal reactions, commonly anxiety reaction. Surprisingly, we are not speaking here only about students, but more importantly about people who teach mathematics. This study indicates that many teachers have fears about teaching

mathematics and how teachers’ fears influence students, their learning outcomes, and how mathematics has impacted them in their years of teaching.

This finding is very relevant to early childhood field as very often we fear the same things, we feel that we are lacking confidence in our teaching abilities, in our teaching methods as well as we feel that we do not have mathematical content knowledge. I think that if an educator is lacking confidence in his/her teaching abilities because of a lack of experience in the classroom then this is natural and the confidence will come with years of being in the classroom; however, methods and content knowledge can be possessed in years while still preparing to become a math teacher. It is important to examine the roots of mathematic anxiety in educators, but yet, how early childhood educators are supposed to be confident mathematic teachers if they only get only one class on how to teach mathematics!

As I mentioned earlier, this article

explores pre-service early childhood mathematics teachers’ anxiety in teaching as well as examines the roots of these fears. Eighty-nine female early childhood pre-service teachers from preparation institution in the Midwest (48% juniors, 52% were seniors) that participated in this research indentified a wide variety of fears towards teaching mathematics as they feel that they lack experience, teaching methods, and content knowledge. A. Bates, N. Latham, and J. Kim focused their study on two specific research questions. The first question focused on what are pre-service teachers’ greatest fears about teaching mathematics to their students? The second question asked, why are pre-service teachers’ fearful of teaching mathematics? The participants were asked to respond to an open-ended survey that was developed by the researchers. Four questions that the teachers were asked to respond focused on isolating specific mathematical fears. Participants had no size/writing space or time limit. As results of this study, data analysis began with open coding by reading each participant comment. After discussion, codes were provided for each comment that captured the response. In some instances, more than one code was designated for each sentence. Next, the researchers analyzed open codes and put them into logical five categories. Results helped the researcher to indentify specific fears of teacher candidates prior to the student teaching experience as well as to determine reasons why candidates were fearful. Early childhood pre-service teachers reported many different types of fears relating to their own knowledge and feeling toward mathematics as well as their students’ success and abilities.
Each and every study done in the math subject brings educators a step closer to tame the subject and fears that there might be, but it also might show us where the real problem is.

This study was done on a small group of pre-serviced teachers from preparation institute (math preparation? Or early childhood preparation?) and the results reflect how teachers feel about teaching math. As early childhood educator and a college student, I learned my teaching math strategies from my experienced coworkers, I did not learn it in college or in class. As future educators, our studies mainly focus on children’s development (many times few classes cover the same topic) and literacy development, but math is being limited to only one class. Am I surprised about the outcome of this study? No, if in general, early childhood programs push teaching mathematics to minimum (one class) then how the educators should feel confident, especially if for majority math is not a favored subject of all. It is obvious that early childhood program students fear going into a classroom to teach math if they only had mathematics for one semester. Is one semester of math going to create confident math teachers? In the reality, it is experience that will make them feel confident and gain teaching methods. I am not even sure if asking pre-service students if they have fears before going into a field is a very relevant question. I think that many educators have anxiety before they have to do something unfamiliar

and something new where they going to be graded for.
My second critique for this research is the way the two research questions were formulated. Even though, the study was primed not to be biased, the two questions are strongly biased. Targeted to focus on fears. Both questions consist words fears and fearful. Participants of this study were forced to focus only on their fears and anxieties because of the way the questions were presented. Once presented with questions formulated a certain way, people will be influenced by it. If the researcher truly wanted to know how pre-serviced teachers feel about going to field for student-teaching mathematics, they should have asked more general question i.e. how do you feel about teaching mathematics? I think this study did not really tell us how confident or how prepared the pre-service students are. In my opinion if substituting word mathematics in these two questions with any other subject matter i.e. literacy, the outcome we might get would be very similar.
In conclusion, mathematics is not an easy concept to teach and it requires good strategies to be a successful teacher. By confronting mathematics anxieties we can tame the fears and some stereotypes in this subject. We should begin by redirecting early childhood college programs to becoming more math oriented and provide future teacher with well-balanced educational programs. Teaching methods, strategies, and content knowledge is something can be thought to students by experienced and hands-on oriented professors. Unfortunately, it cannot be taught in one semester. And confidence? I am sure if future math teachers possess methods, strategies and content knowledge so will they gain more confidence. Teacher preparation programs must change and modify curriculum in order for students to gain confidence and knowledge in teaching math. As I stated before, this research was very interesting to read because it is closely related to us, future educators. However, this study only gave me the answer of what most of teachers fear to teach math. Questions were formatted to focus on the negative approach. I would be more interested in learning how do future mathematics teachers really feel about going into the field and how truly they feel toward mathematics. I feel that this question was not really answered in this research. As the early education math field gets more attention and more appreciation there is a hope that the more future educators will be exposed to it, the more confident we all will grow in teaching it.