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Math Teacher Lounge
Math Teacher Lounge is a biweekly podcast created specifically for K–12 math educators. In each episode co-hosts Bethany Lockhart Johnson (@lockhartedu) and Dan Meyer (@ddmeyer)dive deep, with guests, into the math and educational topics you care about. Interact with us on Twitter (@mtlshow) or join our Facebook group (facebook.com/groups/mathteacherlounge) for more content.
Math Teacher Lounge
S5 - 02. Uncovering the causes of math anxiety
We’re continuing our season theme of math anxiety, going beyond the basics, diving deeper into what causes it, and how we can help students move forward. In this episode, we talk to Dr. Erin Maloney from the University of Ottawa to better understand what’s actually happening in the brain when a person experiences math anxiety, and how we can take steps to shift student mindsets in a positive direction. Listen now and don’t forget to grab your MTL study guide to track your learning and make the most of this episode!
It's the anxiety itself in many ways that can cause people to underperform.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to Math Feature Lounge. I'm Bethany Lockhart Johnson.
Speaker 3:And I'm Dan
Speaker 2:Meyer. This is episode two of our new season, all about math, math, anxiety. Who has it? What is it? What do we do about it?
Speaker 3:I'm learning so much, learning a
Speaker 2:Ton. I loved our first conversation with Dr. Harra Ramirez, episode one, our first episode of the season. Really our goal without conversation was just to, we need to talk about the basics of it for reals. Like what is math, anxiety, what
Speaker 3:Is it? How do you measure it? Yeah. What, how's it defined? Super helpful stuff.
Speaker 2:There's not only one way that it's measured, but it's like in active research right now. Like how are folks, you know, making sense of it. And I think Dr. Ramirez did such a fantastic job of sharing that with our listeners and I learned a lot. You learned a lot, Dan.
Speaker 3:I did. And I'm also super excited to take that knowledge that we have developed together and go and build on top of it and keep on climbing up up the kind of the, the mountain here and learn more about math anxiety, which is why we're super excited to have a guest on Dr. Maloney who is going to help us learn more, especially about what happens to the brain, uh, when it's experiencing math anxiety. There's some really complex stuff that happens there, including the role of parents and educators in creating and resolving math anxiety. And I think we'll also learn that the whole situation is a bit of a hot mess. And we'll try to make it a little, little bit less messy together,
Speaker 2:Little bit less messy. Dan, if we do nothing else, can we make it a little less messy?
Speaker 3:I sometimes prefer a more mess, but in this case I prefer less. So
Speaker 2:I have a two-year-old, so everything is a mess.
Speaker 3:Your life is mess. Yes.<laugh>. Right. Well, I'm excited for you folks to hear this. Um, it was a delightful conversation, so yeah. Tune in. We are joined by Dr. Aaron Maloney.
Speaker 2:Let's go. We are joined by Dr. Erin Maloney, associate professor in the school of psychology at the University of Ottawa, where she directs the cognition and emotion laboratory, as well as serving as the Canada Research Chair in academic achievement and wellbeing. Welcome to the show, Dr. Maloney. We're so excited to have you in the lounge. Yeah,
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me. This is fantastic.
Speaker 2:So our last season was all about math and joy. And even when like I read your title, I felt like I felt more joyful. Like somebody is thinking about academic achievement, but with wellbeing in mind. I love it.
Speaker 1:Ah, thank
Speaker 3:You. Cognition and emotion.
Speaker 2:Emotion.
Speaker 1:Okay. I don't think they can be separate. Right? I think that, I think you have to think about them together cuz they're so intricately connected.
Speaker 3:Love that people try, but we love that. Yeah. That's our vibe here
Speaker 2:Too. People try, that was a big problem with my math anxiety. They just wanted, there was no room for my emotion. They're like, stop weeping at your desk. It's
Speaker 3:Rearranging neurons,
Speaker 2:You know, you're distracting the other children. Uh, so would you mind telling us the story of how you even got interested in this topic? You know, like what, when you tell people that you study math anxiety, or actually I don't know how you describe it to them. I'm hopefully you bring in that wellbeing part, but how, how did you get here? What do you, what do you, what do you Yeah. Tell us. We love it.
Speaker 1:<laugh>. I feel like, I feel like what you're actually asking is how did you make life choices that got you to here<laugh>
Speaker 2:Justify your life choices. Ready? Go
Speaker 1:<laugh>. Woo. Okay. So, um, all right. So we often, in psychology, we joke, right, that instead of doing research, we do me search. And that's, that's admittedly true in my case. So I was a student who absolutely loved math up until about eighth grade, and then something changed and all of a sudden I was terrified of math and I had absolutely no sense of self-efficacy in it, despite trying really hard, I was extremely anxious about it. And so I initially, uh, I set out, my parents were completely convinced that I was absolutely capable of doing mathematics and that I was getting in my own way. And when I went to university, I decided to prove them wrong. So I set out to prove that some people just can't do math, and that's the end of it. And, you know, 20 plus years later, uh, my parents were right. And it turns out that, you know, many people, well, I would argue virtually everyone can do math. And that if you are really anxious about it, it can get in the way. And interestingly, you know, in, in the years that we've been doing this research, there's really good strategies that can be used, um, that hopefully we get a chance to chat about that can really help reduce the amount of anxiety that students are experiencing. But I, you know, I really did set out like a bold teenager that I was to prove my parents wrong. And that backfired, uh,<laugh>. So I know it's kind of a strange answer, but it was, it's the truth. Um, so I was really interested in understanding why it was some people just could not do math.
Speaker 3:That makes two for two so far on guests for this season who did a version of me search. And I feel like this is pretty common for a lot of researchers. Like, I wanna like figure out, like my experience as a teacher, the part where you I think, diverge from a lot of people I knew in grad school, myself included, is that you actually let, uh, counter evidence change your perspective on things. Whereas I feel like a lot of us kind of go in, I know this is true and I'm gonna gather data, and lo and behold I'm true. But only now with, uh, the research tm, you know, trademarked research, uh, attached to it. So that's, uh, really exciting. Thanks for sharing that.
Speaker 2:No, you're welcome. But don't people say that the more personal you get, the more universal it is, right? So like, if you go and get your doctorate, like about something that you think is just your experience or in your brain, then people are gonna be gonna be like, wait a second. You think that too? Wait, that math anxiety isn't just you, you know, I don't know. It sounds like a pretty great path to me. Uh, when you tell folks that you study math anxiety or when you're speaking to folks about your research, do you find that, that there is a lot of folks who relate to, you know, what you're studying? Or how does that conversation typically go?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's, I it is I think an extremely relatable topic. Um, not in the sense that everyone experiences anxiety about math, but everyone seems to know somebody who's really anxious about math or everyone's at least aware of the stereotype that like some people are math people and some people aren't. And that's just the way it is. So every, it feels like everyone has feelings about math and everyone seems very happy to share those feelings. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Um, so one thing I've always found really interesting and actually, so I, I know you mentioned that you had hiroto on recently, um, Hiroto and I have had really interesting conversations about how people are really quick to tell you that they hate math and they can't do math, and they're anxious about math. And I've yet to have anyone ever tell me they hate, you know, they hate reading, they can't read, you know, they're really anxious about reading as an adult. So for some reason math seems really different. And in that sense people always seem to be pretty excited to talk about their feelings towards math.
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely been on an airplane or two myself and had those conversations. Um, you know, people asking to be receded because they, uh, found out that I do math for a living or whatever, or just unburdening themselves for sure. I'm super curious, like I think that the fact that you, you know, are doing the me search is reason enough to want to dedicate your life to this study. But I am curious if you were gonna justify to someone else, like why is math anxiety important to study? Like what are its consequences even outside of math education? Um, what would you say to that?
Speaker 1:So I think it's probably not hard to convince people that success in math is important, right? So we know that, uh, children who start elementary school behind in mathematics tend to stay behind in mathematics unless they have any kind of very targeted intervention. We know that children who do worse in mathematics throughout K to 12 education in general get lower paying jobs when they're older. We also know that, you know, when they do worse than mathematics relative to their peers, there's fewer jobs that are open to them relative to if they excelled in math, right? And so I think in many ways there are really clear consequences for students who are not comfortable with math and who avoid it. But I think one of the really, really interesting things about math anxiety and why, maybe part of why I've fallen in love with it as a research topic is that it's the anxiety itself in many ways that can cause people to underperform. So it's not just the case that people who are bad at math are anxious about it, it's actually that the anxiety itself can cause you to do worse in math. And that for me is really exciting cuz it means that if we can, if we can change your mindset, then we can really set you on a path with several more options available to you career wise. And I think that is really empowering.
Speaker 3:Hmm. Yeah, definitely. And I'd love for you to explore like your laboratory as the cognition and emotion laboratory, which I love how you're creating those linkages between how you, how you feel about a thing and what you, your opportunities or your aptitude for learning it. I'm really curious, can you say more about the, the relationship there? How does feeling anxiety impair your ability to do mathematics?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so feeling anxiety, um, typically, right? What you tend to experience is these negative thoughts and ruminations, right? So you can imagine you're somebody who doesn't really love math, you're pretty anxious about it. You know, Bethany, maybe you've had this kind of experience before. I'm gonna call you out on it. Um, I've had it many times where you sit down to do a math test and all of a sudden you're not focusing on the actual math test in front of you. You're focusing on things like the consequences of not doing well on this, right? Or my parents are gonna be really disappointed if I don't pass this test, or my teacher is gonna think negatively negative of me. Or sometimes we see things like, I'm a girl, girls don't do math. These types of, of stereotypes. And what happens is that those thoughts actually tie up really important cognitive resources, like really important memory resources that you need to do the math test. And so if you are trying to essentially do two things at once, right? You're trying to deal with all these negative thoughts that are distracting you and you're trying to do the math test, then you're not going to do as well as someone who's sitting down and doesn't have all of these distracting thoughts to deal with. And we actually, we know that from research that we have in our lab right now where we just ask people like, Hey, when you did this math test, what kind of stuff are you thinking about? What we find is that the people who are really anxious about math report a whole bunch of thoughts that are unrelated really to the math test. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> per se mm-hmm.<affirmative>, like, it's more about the consequences of doing poorly. And as a result of those thoughts, they actually, they end up doing worse.
Speaker 3:This has been really helpful to figure out like how, uh, the emotional state of doing math affects the ability to do math. And I it's really interesting how you're saying that, um, the direction of the causality can go from the emotions to the cognition. And I'm just curious then, what is the source of the bad emotions about math? Like where does that come from? Is it nature? Is it nurture some combination? How do you see it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think, so one, that's a fantastic question and there's been a whole bunch of people all around the world that have been spending a lot of time really trying to pinpoint that down. Uh, and I think the answer is that it's, you know, it's complex. So most of what it's looking like right now is that it, it is a combination of both. So essentially what we find is that kids who start elementary school who are a little bit behind in math, right? And for the question of why they're behind, that's also complex. So it could be genetics, it could be just environmental input mm-hmm.<affirmative> before the child ever entered formal schooling kind of thing. But in essence, what we find is that kids that start school behind in mathematics, those are the children who are most likely to develop anxiety about math by the time they're finished first grade. Okay. But we also know that once they've developed the anxiety about math, then that's when they get these thoughts and ruminations that kind of tie up those memory resources that then is gonna make it harder for them to succeed in math tests. So you get into this sort of vicious cycle, right? Where maybe you start behind a little bit and then you develop the anxiety, the anxiety causes you to underperform relative to what you should be able to. So now you're even further behind, you get more anxious because you're not doing as well as you'd like to. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. But again, kind of coming back to the why are the children starting behind in the first place? Um, some of that seems to be the role that, that parents are playing in the household. So, you know, some kids come from a household where parents are playing a lot more math games with them talking about mathematical concepts on a regular basis. Maybe they have older siblings who are, you know, practicing arithmetic and, and mathematical processing in front of them. And so those kids are exposed to more math before they ever even start formal schooling. Those kids seem to do better. And then we also know that the parents' attitudes matter a lot too. So what we find is that when parents are high in math anxiety themselves, especially when they help their children a lot with their math homework in really early ages, we find that those kids end up being more anxious about math by the end of the school year, and they also end up doing worse in mathematics. So it really does seem to be, you know, kind of a, a complex set of factors that have something to do with both maybe genetic predisposition to success in math and genetic predisposition to anxiety, but then also the social attitudes and stereotypes about math to which you're exposed at home that really seem to, to be coming together to create this anxiety in young children.
Speaker 2:I feel like everything you're saying is<laugh>. So it, it makes so much sense and yet it's so often not talked about, right? Because it's just more like, it, it gets boiled down to, oh, they're just not a math person instead of all these other factors that are at play. And I completely remember the anxiety I felt bef whether it was a test or not walking into my math classroom when I was in ninth grade, right. And there's no way I was set up and ready to learn. Right.<laugh>. And something with, um, you know, we mentioned Dr. Ramirez, he was talking about validating that anxiety. If teachers validate that like, oh, you know what, sometimes this is, sometimes you might feel stumped or this might feel overwhelming. Even the power in creating space for that in the classroom, right? And acknowledging that it doesn't, math doesn't have to quote unquote come easy to you in order for you to have access or make sense is such a powerful concept. And I love the way that you are looking at all these different factors and saying, Hey, it's both simple and also a lot more complicated than we're we're making it. Right.
Speaker 1:No, and I, I agree with that sentiment so much, right? Like, I think though, one thing I will sort of caution is that I think when teachers are validating the anxiety, or when parents are validating the anxiety, I think there's a very fine line that needs to be walked where we need to be able to say, you know, it's okay to struggle with something that's, that is completely okay. And as we're, you know, as we're working towards something that's really valuable, right? We can, we can work hard at something and by working hard at it, we're going to get better. And I think that type of validating is really, really important and valuable. I think what we wanna be careful of is not to say things like, oh, it's okay. I also never loved math and, you know, oh, I was never a math person either. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And so even though we might be bringing comfort to the the child, I think that that's sending the wrong message. And so sometimes it's really well intentioned and really not great. Uh,
Speaker 2:A hundred percent in terms
Speaker 1:Of the messaging. Yeah. So that's the only, so just for people listening, the only sort of caution that I would give there is that I think there's nuances to the validating of the feelings that are important.
Speaker 2:I am so glad you said that because I, as a kindergarten teacher, I vividly remember, and this is as early as, you know, the kids are five years old, right? And I remember in a parent-teacher conference, a parent saying, oh, I wasn't a math person either, or, oh, no, Ugh. In, and they were so quick, like you said about they wouldn't say that about reading, but they were so quick to talk about their lack of natural math aptitude, right? And, and it was really interesting because you know that even if they're not like saying that specific thing at home, those attitudes are absolutely carrying over at home. And they're absolutely carrying over to, to how they interact with their kiddo around math and around what's happening in the conversations about math. And I, I felt like a lot of times my work as a teacher was also to help support parents through their own math anxiety, and help give them some new language for how they can talk about math. And that math is more than just getting to an answer quickly. Like, let's talk about, let's go on math walks, let's go on number walks, what numbers are around the home? Or Oh, is that bigger than this? Do you have more of this? And even those little things, I, my hope was that it was starting to shift the conversation around what math was possible in the home, particularly when you saw that it was the parents who had palpable math anxiety. Right. And, and how much you know, that that's gonna impact what's happening when you sit down to do homework together.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I, so I love that you are, that you have worked to encourage parents to do that. So we, we do similarly, like even from a research perspective where I will often give talks to parents and teachers and we talk about the idea of trying to mathematize everything, right? So just the idea that math is absolutely everywhere and you know, whether it's a matter of playing games in the car with your kids where you're thinking of a number and it's, you know, my number is higher than 42, but lower than 80, and what number do you think I might be thinking of? And, and gradually trying to get the child to that number or, you know, asking questions like, what's your favorite even number and why? Or, and just little things like that that, that I think can make math fun for kids that help kind of, I don't even know how to explain it, but just that idea, right? Of like bringing joy into it so it's not always this like heavy subject that kids have to come to. So we definitely, we try to talk to parents about the idea of, like I said, mathematizing everything. And usually it's well received. Cuz often parents find it empowering, right? They're like, oh, well, but I could do that, but like, that's not math. And you're like, no, but it is. Yep. Like it is. Yep. And sometimes parents will say like, well, I don't know how to do fractions. And you're like, okay, but how do you, how do you bake? I'm like, well, I don't know. I just like, I know how to do those fractions. And you're like, okay, but that's the starting point. Let's work with that. Like, let's, you know. And I think a lot of times it's, it's reminding the parents that they're actually far more capable than what they think they are, despite the fact that maybe they struggled with math when they were younger.
Speaker 3:Yeah. This is so interesting. And I feel like part of the challenge around conversations about anxiety and math and how to, how to resolve it and where it comes from, is that it, like, it, it presupposes a single definition of math. And so, you know, we're talking about like how to be more mindful about math, but you know, like if, if if kids were walking every day through a treacherous street, you know, the, the solution might not be become more mindful, you know, about that street. It's just like, we gotta fix the, the treacherous nature of the street, really. You know, like, it's like, so that I, I love that we're talking also about, um, you know, redefining what math is, making it more playful. That feels like a super important component here. I'd love to know more about what you know about the role of gender in all of this. Are there differences in the way boys and girls experience math, anxiety and how it relates to achievement in math?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's really, really interesting, I think, research on, uh, gender in math, anxiety. So in general, right? We find that girls tend to experience more anxiety about math than boys do. So one hypothesis is that it has to do with just social stereotypes that, you know, girls are, are good at reading, boys are good at math kind of thing. So there's some evidence to suggest that that might be playing a role. There's other evidence to suggest as well that maybe boys actually do experience as much anxiety, they just don't really own up to it.
Speaker 3:Ooh, yikes.
Speaker 1:So there's, there's thoughts are, you know, there's a bit of an apprehension for males to, uh, admit experiencing the anxiety. But I think one of the things that is extremely interesting about it, at least to me, is that we don't tend to see gender differences in young children. So in early elementary school, even though we'll see that kids as young as six years old will experience anxiety about math and that that anxiety is related to how well they do in math and how much they enjoy math, it doesn't seem to vary as a function of gender at that young age. It doesn't seem to be related to gender until kids are at about sixth, seventh grade that we really start to see this gender difference coming online. And so that to me suggests that it's probably something more social than biological at play. It probably has something more to do with these stereotypes and stuff. But another really interesting, or at least I'm biased, but to me, another really interesting line of research that comes into play, and some of this is stuff out of, out of my own lab. Um, so we know that boys in general tend to do better at spatial processing than girls. And we know that spatial processing is really important for math, right? So math and space are, are pretty connected. And by spatial processing, I mean things like being able to picture something rotating in your mind or, you know, envisioning how these puzzle pieces might fit together. And so we know that boys tend to do better at that type of processing. And the gender difference there seems to be related to gender differences in math anxiety. So there's some speculation too that it might be that as the math starts to become more reliant on spatial processing, that that's when we see this separation between boys and girls with respect to how much anxiety they feel about math. So a lot of this is to say, I think the answer to the gender question right now is a, uh, what we would, I think what we would officially call a bit of a hot mess, um,<laugh>, where I think there's probably more questions than answers, but I think that there's definitely something going on and it, it really seems to be coming on later in elementary school
Speaker 3:That's a re refreshingly honest admission from a social scientist that it's a, a hot mess and not perfectly clear<laugh>. Um, so I appreciate that. Um, it's interesting what you said about the spatial, the spatial reasoning. I like, I I I, in our work creating curriculum at Amplify, I find we lean a lot on trying to tie abstract math towards spatial topics. Like can you estimate, you know, a quantity before you calculate it, can you identify a pattern and where it breaks before you prove it abstractly? And it, I, I dunno, it's just interesting to me. I'm just thinking out loud about how I feel like math becomes more abstract rather than more spatial. The farther you venture into secondary math, I, I'm wondering if I misunderstand, um, what you're meaning by spatial and the progression of math from K-12.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think you can still have, you can have math be abstract, but still really relying on spatial processing, right? And I think part of that is maybe, maybe a bit of, of us having different definitions of when we say s spatial. So in cognitive science, when we talk about spatial representations or spatial reasoning, it's really like anything you're picturing in your mind anytime you're really picturing these things in your mind and manipulating those images at all. So if you imagine, you know, even like at a simple level, but it's gonna hold when you're going more complex as well. So doing like equivalence problems for example, right? Where you have to balance the equations. Yeah. Even just being able to envision things kind of moving around that equal sign and bringing, you know, one piece of the equation from this side to the other is actually an extremely spatial kind of reasoning. Right? Or when you're expanding, that's actually extremely, like, extremely spatial despite the fact that it might not feel like it initially. Hmm. Obviously anything in geometry is going to be very spatial. Um, so I think in that sense, we would argue that the spatial processing is still playing a pretty important role. Sure. But it's maybe a different type of spatial processing than what we're seeing at a very early level in elementary school. That said, you can completely disagree with me too, cuz I, I could also just be wrong and that's fair. My kids tell me I'm wrong all the time. So I'm used to<laugh>, I'm used to being told that I'm wrong.
Speaker 3:Well, we're a bit more deferential on, on this, uh, on this year's show with our guests. So I would not do that. But it makes sense what you're saying about how these are things that you manipulate in your mind, whether they are like Xs and Ys or numbers and fractions. These are all things that we manipulate that ties into differences in this spacial reasoning category it sounds like, which then contributes to meth anxiety. And it does start to feel like it's a, there's a lot going on here is what it feels like.
Speaker 2:You mean hot mess?
Speaker 3:I meant hot mess. Yeah.
Speaker 1:<laugh>, I think that's the technical term, right? I'm pretty sure that's the technical term
Speaker 3:For it. I, I didn't know the citation for it, so I didn't say it, but uh, I knew who in literature named that. But yeah,
Speaker 1:I'll write something at some point.
Speaker 3:Like Loney 2022. Yeah. Yes. Narrow on.
Speaker 2:So I will say that one of my dreams in, in like thinking about this season and, you know, last season, but particularly this season since we're, we're really getting to talk to some researchers who get to think about this and have really interesting conversations about it all the time. One of my dreams is that we're bringing, cause we do have some folks who are researchers that are listening, right? But then we also have teachers and folks who are in the classroom every day and parents and caregivers listening. And so I think one of the beautiful things about the way that I hear you talking about it is you're thinking about the research, but it's so applicable, right? And I, I wonder if there's anything else you can say around it. I wanna like reduce that, divide that gap between the research that's happening and then like what's happening with the kiddos and in the classroom and at home. And I don't know if it's like a magic wand thing where like if you<laugh> if there were changes you'd wanna see at a societal level to try to combat math anxiety, but uh, you'd see where I'm going. Yeah. You know, it's like<laugh>.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna answer maybe in two ways. So I think the first thing that I'm hearing from you, uh, is that idea of diminishing this divide, right? And so one thing I try to keep in mind as, as someone who's, you know, a researcher and working in the lab, I will often be called in to talk to teachers and give professional development sessions and they, you know, they often want the, the sage on the stage academic that stands up there and tells you the answers to things. And, and one of the first things that I'm gonna admit when I get up there is I am not on the front lines. So like what I do in the lab for me to tell you that that's gonna work in a classroom of 30 kids who may or may not have eaten dinner that day and like may or may not have snow pants and may or not like it's
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:You know, I think we also need to be a little bit reasonable. So I try really hard in my own program of research to make sure that I'm always talking to teachers and to principals and to curriculum designers to make sure that the ideas that I have make sense. In fact, one of the most recent book chapters that I wrote, I wrote in collaboration with a really good friend of mine who's a principal, like an elementary school principal and a former math consultant. And we wrote it together to really say like, Hey, here's how we can help each other, you know, inform how research can inform practice and how practice can also inform research. Cuz he can come to me and say, I'm doing this. I can't find anything in the literature to support this, but I'm sure it works and we can design something in the lab to test whether or not, you know, it seems like it's gonna work.
Speaker 2:That's huge. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Uh, empirically. And so I think that open communication is massive. One thing that we're doing in my own lab to try to keep that open communication available. So to anyone listening who's ever tried to get access to a journal article, uh, they're held behind paywalls, right? So one, the way it works, my understanding of this anyway, is that the journal owns the formatted version of the paper. So what we do is we put up audio recordings of all of the research papers that we ever publish. So I'm pretty sure I own the words as the author and the journal owns the like pretty AFI version that you can buy. So we, we audio record all of our papers so that if you know, teachers or parents ever want to hear the actual like science that's going into some of these decisions, they have access to at least the stuff that we do in our lab. And we also put up an infographic for every paper just highlighting kind of the main questions and main findings. And we do that because I think that the only way for the information to actually be useful is if it gets into the hands of the stakeholders that actually need that information
Speaker 2:And is accessible. That's huge. That's huge.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. So that, that's one way that we try to do it. And like I said, the other thing, you know, we try to always be working with principals and with teachers. I joke that the way that I remedied this in my own life, so my husband's a teacher, um, it's like I just married one, it's fine like<laugh> so I can, I can grill him on a regular basis and be like, I wanna try this experiment. Do you think it's gonna work? And he can say like, it's not going to, here's why
Speaker 3:That's awesome. Uh, ma marrying a participant is, uh, you know, a research participant is unethical, of course would not clear I r b, but turning your partner into a participant, like what are you gonna do? That's a great,
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's fair game. Yep. Yeah. Yep. So that's, I think, uh, we we compensate each other<laugh>. So, um, no, but it, so I do like, I joke a little bit about that he was a teacher simply cuz he wanted to be one. Not cuz I needed him to be one, but, so I think that communication part is, is really key. Um, that's one thing. Then the other maybe part of the question or the other sort of piece of the question that I was hearing is that idea of like, how do we fix math anxiety, right? Like what's the great, I'm glad that there's a whole bunch of time and effort and energy going into trying to understand this, but what, where are we at? And I think with that it's, it's really, really promising. So there's been a lot of research coming out looking at how best to, uh, help children or even adults manage their own anxiety about math. And there's a few really interesting strategies that seem to be quite effective. So one, and I don't know if if um, it feels weird calling him Dr. Ramirez just cuz I, I know him well but I don't know if Dr. Ramirez would've talked about this in his, when he chatted with you, but he has some really interesting work on expressive writing. Did he, did he chat about that at all?
Speaker 2:He didn't, but I read, I read some of his work about it and I think it's so fascinating. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, okay, well I'll tell you about his work on it. Yes, please. Please. Because it's super useful. So when we talked about that idea, right, of how anxiety kind of causes these thoughts and ruminations and they tie up the memory resources that you need. So what Herto has found is that when you get students to write about their anxiety for about 10 minutes before they do a test, what ends up happening is they end up doing better on the test relative to if they would not have written about their anxiety at all all, and this is particularly true for students who are really high in anxiety, okay? And the idea is that all of those thoughts that they were going to have about the test or the consequences of the test, et cetera, you just kind of get'em, it's like a mind dump where you get'em all onto the page at first before you even go to do the test. And now when you go to do the test, you're not having to do two things at once. You're no longer dealing with these thoughts cuz you got'em all out on the paper beforehand. And so Herardo has some really interesting work showing that that works for math anxiety and then it also works for just testing anxiety in general. And so that's a strategy that I love. I also, part of what I really love about it is it's so low cost, right? You need a paper and a pencil and it's great. Um, so those are always my favorite strategies, the ones that don't really cost us anything. So that's one way of kind of dealing with like the cognitive part of the anxiety. The other thing you can do is try to deal with the anxiety part of the anxiety. So for that, what we find is that really the typical strategies that you're gonna see for anxiety tend to work for math anxiety. So things like focused breathing, right? Making sure you're doing deep inhales and exhales that really like diaphragmatic breathing seems to be quite helpful. We know that what we call progressive desensitization is really key. So that's the idea of doing things, you know, starting with the questions that you know, you know how to handle, right? And then gradually working up to the more difficult questions. So you're sort of gradually exposing yourself to the more complex stuff. And how that can play out on an actual test at school is you sit down and instead of just starting with question number one, you actually read the whole test, see which questions you feel like you know the best, start with those questions and that helps build your confidence so that you're better able to tackle the questions that are maybe a little bit outside of where you're currently at. So that seems to be really helpful. The other part that I will say too, that's extremely helpful. So we know that anxiety really ties up those memory resources and so the more you can make the math automatic, the more immune it's going to be to anxiety in the moment. And so I know that, I know that this part can be a little bit controversial because we don't wanna necessarily demotivate children and kind of kill the enthusiasm for math that we're trying to cultivate. But really, you know, really committing your arithmetic facts to memory can be extremely helpful. So really learning those times tables really learning your addition and subtraction facts. Cuz what happens is then when you're in a situation where you need that information, right? Even if you're anxious and you're, you're working with sort of fewer cognitive resources than what you would normally have, you actually don't need that many cognitive resources to be able to pull something from memory that you've memorized. So it really helps to kind of protect you against some of the negative impacts of the anxiety while you're doing that test
Speaker 2:And you're not using all your cognitive resources to figure out seven times eight because yeah, you can really focus on like what you're trying to do with that. So, you know. Oh, that's fascinating. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes. No, a hundred percent right. And so I know that's one that, like I said, I know it can be somewhat controversial because it's, you know, we, we've talked about or we haven't talked about in this conversation, but, um, we often talk about the idea of drilling and killing, right? So you drill the facts, you kill the, the enthusiasm. But I think that there are ways that we can drill arithmetic facts or help make them automatic but still fun, right? It doesn't have to always be in a high pressure kind of way.
Speaker 2:Totally. And we've talked about fluency and I'm sure we'll talk about it more in, in the lounge and that is interesting that that link between anxiety, right? When the fluency isn't there, that or you know, of course there is, like we hear about anxiety with time tests, but the idea of that is something you can do to reduce it because you have those facts just to at your ready, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I actually, again, I'm gonna be a little bit controversial, so I don't hate time tests in the way that a lot of people do. Uh, but I, so I love time to practice. So I think once we've got to a point where children have a fairly decent understanding of skills, like, of a skill, once they've got a fairly decent grasp on it, then I love the idea of the, the time to practice. So it can be still in a low pressure situation where in many ways it doesn't matter if you get the answer to the question correct, but we're practicing doing it in a situation in which you might be feeling a little bit of pressure, but it's not real pressure, if that makes sense. And I think that can be really, really useful for students. And again, it can be done in a fun way, right? Like it doesn't have to be these super intense ways. It can be fun, but I think that in life there are situations in which the time that it takes you to complete a problem matter. And I think that we have to make sure that we don't get too far away from that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It feels like we should do an entire other episode thinking about ways to develop that fluency and automaticity that don't contribute to anxiety or create, you know, further disparities between people who are high meth anxiety and low meth anxiety. Not a small question, I'm sure. And I appreciate you, uh, alluding to all of that. Um, I, you know, this whole thing, as you said is quite the hot mess and I feel like you, Dr. Maloney have helped us make this, uh, a little less messy in our heads and hopefully the listeners' heads. I I really appreciate that. I just love, you've mentioned, um, lots of resources that you have. You've alluded to them audio book, um, style readings of your research, which I need cause I just finished, you know, Harry Potter, the seventh book, so I need a new, you know, thing to listen to like that. Um, also infographics. Can you tell our listeners where they can find this work of yours and if there are any other kinds of, um, resources that you wanna wanna plug for our listeners here?
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. Um, so we, all of our resources can be found on my lab website. So the address for that is, it's www dot aaron e r i n Maloney, m a l o n e y.ca. Uh, so there we have, like you said, the infographics and the audio articles and all that stuff. And then we also have a link to a new kid's book out actually that, uh, colleague of mine and I have published recently that really walks through some of these strategies on combating math anxiety. So the book is written as a children's book, uh, so it's Peyton and Charlie Challenge Math, but it's secretly is a book that would also work for adults. Uh, so if you are a parent that's a little bit anxious about math or a teacher that you know, maybe is a little bit anxious and you wanna see how some of these strategies can play out and that book, we linked to it on the website, but it is available for purchase on Amazon. And the one thing I will say about the book, cuz this is something that we were pretty proud of, um, so Sherry Lynn score Check, who is a school psychologist and I wrote the book and it's available for purchase at our cost price, so we don't actually make any money on the book. It was literally just a way of getting some of the science out to people who might be able to benefit from it,
Speaker 2:Reducing that divide.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well that's what we're trying to do, right? So I think in the US the books, I think it's like$6 on Amazon. And then in terms of, of other resources, we're in the process right now of creating, you know, some informational videos and and stuff like that that hopefully will be useful for, for parents and for teachers just in terms of understanding a little bit more about the anxiety and understanding how to, to deal with the anxiety in the classroom more at home or wherever it might be coming up.
Speaker 3:Well thanks so much. I really appreciate, we appreciate, uh, you coming on and hearing about how you're trying to bridge so many different barriers from research to practice and school to home. It's just really inspiring and we, we'd love to have you back on sometime. So thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2:I feel like we've just hung out, don't you dear?
Speaker 3:Are we rolling here? Oh my gosh, we're rolling. I just thought we're just hanging. Yeah, I've
Speaker 2:Just hanging. I know, I do. I
Speaker 1:Really appreciate that. Like it has a very kind of chill vibe to it.
Speaker 3:Chill vibe. Like a lounge. Like a lounge. Thank you. You get us, you get us.
Speaker 2:<laugh><laugh>, Dan Meyer. I was shopping for children's books and there was this book and it was talking about like being at home with mom and it's going through all the things that the child did that day with mom. It's like, you know, we played outside, we ran through the sprinklers, we even did some homework and it shows them sitting at the table with the homework that it's clearly math homework in front of them. And the mom is like a harrumph like a very perplexed, anxious face. And there's all these question marks above her and it's just like, it's
Speaker 3:Like there not be numbers on that
Speaker 2:Paper, right? Exactly. And the child is like, oh, you know, and I I, I mean, I have to give credit to the illustrator because they really did capture the clear message of this interaction, which was sitting down to do math homework or think about math together is a source of angst, right? And according to this author and according to too many people. And so I think what's really important is that we recognize those images when we see them out there and and like speak back to them and say, Hey, wait a second. Yeah, it can feel like that and it doesn't have to and what's going on that like, that's just the assumed way that it's gonna feel to sit down and, and math together, you know?
Speaker 3:Yeah. It feels like we all have a lot of, a lot of work to do on the whole math anxiety front. Uh, Dr. Maloney helped us see yeah, like how parents play a part, educators play a part society and how they create people plays its own part. And, uh, how we all define math as a thing where we evaluate student thought or where students play it with their thoughts, uh, has its own huge part as well. So yeah, it was a really fantastic conversation with Dr. Maloney. I hope you folks will check out the show notes where you will find links to Dr. Maloney's website. A lot of her work, which as you heard, is very geared towards practitioners and parents and even directly at, at kids, especially the new children's books. She co-authored Peyton and Charlie Challenge Math.
Speaker 2:Next time we're gonna dive even more into the nitty gritty of combating math anxiety. To do that, we're actually gonna be joined. I am so excited about this by Dr. Rosemarie Trulio from Sesame Workshop.
Speaker 4:Our core audience are two to four year olds and they love math and what's not to love? Children don't come with this math anxiety. Math anxiety is learned
Speaker 3:So excited.
Speaker 2:Sesame Street was a huge part of my childhood and my, my toddler doesn't know it yet, but Sesame Street is coming. It's coming. Like he's, we're we're gonna introduce Sesame Street to him. We just haven't yet.
Speaker 3:Sesame Street straight raised me, right? Yeah. Don't tell my parents. But that, that's, yeah, that's true. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, I'm excited too. Yeah, it's me a
Speaker 2:Blast. I'm really excited. I, I think that the more we dive into this topic, which again, we're gonna look at math anxiety from a lot of different angles, and I'm excited to talk to Dr. Trulio about how we can take this research and these conversations that are happening about math and how it can actually impact what's happening in homes. Cause we wanna help create positive relationships with, with mathematics, with kids in math. I, I'm so excited and I hope you folks keep listening. We love having you here in the lounge. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to Math Teacher Lounge, wherever you get podcasts. And if you like what you're hearing, please leave us a rating and a review. It helps more listeners to find the show and let other folks know, know about this show. Recommendations are great. Thanks so much for listening.
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