Causes underlying pre-service teachers' negative beliefs and anxieties about mathematics

Abstract

This article reports on a study that investigated the causes underlying a sample of eighteen third-year Australian pre-service primary teachers ’ negative beliefs and anxiety about mathematics. It was found that most of the participants ’ maths-anxiety could be attributed to their primary school experiences in learning mathematics. Situations such as teaching mathematics or being evaluated in mathematics were noted as particularly stressful and mathematical topics such as algebra, space and number sense were specifically identified to cause maths- anxiety. The paper concludes with a brief discussion about the implications of these findings for an ensuing program whose purpose is to help these pre-service teachers address their negative beliefs and anxieties about mathematics. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND Teachers ’ beliefs about mathematics have a powerful impact on the practice of teaching (Charalambos, Philippou & Kyriakides, 2002; Ernest, 2000). It has been suggested that teachers with negative beliefs about mathematics influence a learned helplessness response from students, whereas the students of teachers with positive

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