SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for chromas
Think you're bad at math? You may suffer from 'math trauma'
I teach people how to teach math, and I've been working in this field for 30 years. Across those decades, I've met many people who suffer from varying degrees of math trauma – a form of debilitating mental shutdown when it comes to doing mathematics.
When people share their stories with me, there are common themes. These include someone telling them they were "not good at math," panicking over timed math tests, or getting stuck on some math topic and struggling to move past it. The topics can be as broad as fractions or an entire class, such as Algebra or Geometry.
[...] One of the biggest challenges U.S. math educators face is helping the large number of elementary teachers who are dealing with math trauma. Imagine being tasked with teaching children mathematics when it is one of your greatest personal fears.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday November 05 2018, @03:29PM
It is a stressor to have to not only learn facts and rules, but also reasoning which allows you to apply those facts and rules to problems you will never be given in school. Learning anything is traumatic to some degree because it does require the learner to change.
You're told, "you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong," and many times "you're right" is ignored because that is what is expected. Beg and plead, "why do I have to learn this?" I did with the multiplication tables. Fortunately I had parents who were very sympathetic and understanding.... and absolutely insisted I memorize them, because they knew I was capable of doing so.
Can it be unnecessarily traumatic, or additional trauma be applied by a teacher? Yep. I wouldn't doubt that this occurs and then makes it harder the next time around if there is one.
But on the other hand I've seen others who simply will not accept and cope with the stress that comes along with learning. They don't give up because a teacher has traumatized them, they give up because they do not want to expend the effort it takes to memorize, learn, and then adapt that knowledge. There is no perceived benefit to the learning, or the perceived benefits are outweighed by the estimated effort to get there. What I'm saying is that there are student who do indeed refuse to learn.
Either can happen. An excellent teacher is one who has learned to analyze the student and decide where the problem is and offer remediation consistent with that. Should the student not want to proceed after that point, a teacher is better off using their resources to assist those that do want to succeed and will make the effort necessary. I've had not-so-good teacher and extremely excellent ones. Another mark of an excellent teacher: If the student is interested that teacher tends to commit everything possible to enabling the learning to occur.
This sig for rent.