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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @02:55PM (1 child)
It's a mixed bag. There's too much emphasis on understanding and not enough emphasis on doing. The result is that the students might understand, but if they can do it at all, they're very slow at things that become important as time goes by.
There's also goofiness like repeat addition. There's that viral problem from a while ago that was something like 3x5=? and having to do 5+5+5 and not 3+3+3+3+3 or perhaps it was the other way around. This is wrong. Both of them are legitimate ways of thinking about the problem, even if it's better to think of the 3 units being stretched by a factor of 5 or 5 being stretched by a factor of 3.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday November 06 2018, @03:15PM
No point learning to do if you don't understand -- you'll never know in real life when to do it.
Doing with understanding is a powerful combination.