Educators’ anxiety about teaching math could negatively affect their students’ performance, a new study finds. And students who are Black, Hispanic, or from low-income families are more likely to have teachers who are uncomfortable with the subject.
The findings, published this month in the journal Educational Researcher, could have implications for teacher preparation and professional development, especially as states and districts weigh new efforts to improve how schools teach math, said NaYoung Hwang, an assistant education professor at the University of New Hampshire and co-author of the study.
“There’s a reproduction of math anxiety,” Hwang said. “Teachers’ relationship with the subject really matters.”
The study distinguishes between math anxiety in general—a subject widely studied in both students and teachers—and math teaching anxiety, which relates specifically to discomfort with leading math instruction and is less understood.
Researchers analyzed scores on state tests for 106,000 Indiana students who attended 3rd through 8th grade between the 2010-11 and 2016-17 school years, weighing them against a statewide survey of 3,300 teachers that included questions about how respondents felt about teaching math.
They found a correlation between higher levels of teacher anxiety and slightly lower student test scores. The results controlled for a wide range of student and teacher factors, including prior math achievement, free and reduced-price meal eligibility, English language learner status, use of individualized education programs, teacher gender, teacher race/ethnicity, and levels of teacher experience and education.
To minimize potential bias, researchers used a statistical technique called fixed effects, which allowed them to compare the same student year over year when they were taught by teachers with differing levels of math teaching anxiety. That model helps reduce chances the data is affected by variables the study’s controls didn’t already account for, Hwang said.
While the findings were modest for a single year, the effect could compound over time if a student has teachers with high levels of math teaching anxiety over multiple years, the study says.
“Taken together, this evidence underscores the importance of fostering positive math learning experiences—not only in K–12 classrooms, but also in teacher-preparation programs,” the researchers wrote.
Measuring math teaching anxiety
To calculate math teaching anxiety, the researchers created a composite score that relied on four questions from the state-administered teacher survey.
Those questions asked teachers to rate their responses on a scale of 1-6, with 1 meaning “strongly disagree” and 6 meaning “strongly agree.” Researchers reverse coded the scores on positive statements so that a lower score represented higher anxiety levels on all questions. The mean response to each item was between 2.01 to 2.53.
- “Teaching mathematics does not intimidate me at all";
- “If I taught in a team with a teacher partner, I’d like to have another teacher teaching mathematics";
- “Of all the subjects, mathematics is the one I worry about teaching"; and
- “I would be willing to teach math exclusively.”
Ultimately, a standard deviation increase in math teaching anxiety is associated with a 0.039 standard deviation decrease in student math achievement, the study finds. While relatively small, the impact accumulates.
“Having [teachers with higher levels of math anxiety] consistently from third through eighth grades is associated with a 0.18 SD lower math achievement, which represents a meaningful difference in students’ learning outcomes,” the study says.
Teacher math anxiety had stronger effects on some subpopulations of students: girls, English learners, lower-achieving students, Hispanic students, and Asian students. This suggests that a teacher’s discomfort with the subject could compound other hurdles to students’ learning, such as internalized stereotypes or the stress associated with higher cultural expectations for achievement, Hwang said.
Some teachers were more prone to teaching math anxiety than others. Female teachers showed more anxiety than male teachers, teachers with graduate degrees showed less anxiety than their peers without them, and teachers who’d been on the job for seven or more years had less anxiety than their peers with less experience.
Elementary teachers were more likely to feel anxious teaching math
Teachers in higher grades had less math teaching anxiety than lower grade teachers, the study found. That aligns with a perennial challenge for school administrators, who often find secondary math teachers, who are more likely to be specialists, are more comfortable with teaching math than elementary school teachers, who are generalists and tend to feel less capable in their math instruction abilities, Hwang said.
She stressed that the study identified a correlation, not a direct cause-and-effect relationship between teacher attitudes and student achievement.
The study also does not identify reasons why teachers’ jitters about teaching math might affect how well their students learn, but previous research has found teachers with math anxiety may rely on more rote memorization and fewer classroom interactions.
“When teachers experience anxiety about mathematics, they may implicitly project their own difficulties onto students, leading them to avoid challenging content and rely on simplified instructional approaches,” the study says.
That lack of enthusiasm and confidence can diminish students’ learning experiences and sense of their own capabilities, Hwang said. She called for PD and teacher preparation programs to teach more about math teaching anxiety and to help teachers develop more comfort with the subject and learn to teach in positive, effective ways.
“If they set their expectations that low from day one, it’s not a good starting point,” she said.
