This could be a WitCH or PoSWW but I’m not expecting anyone to bother. And I am sure as hell not gonna bother. I’ve paid my dues (here, here, here, here and here), and I’m not paying further.
Last week, the journal Nature proto-published a scientific report, a study with the pithy title,
Mathematics performance predicts cognitive and affective math anxiety through mutual mediation pathways from adolescence onward with potential working memory moderations
Then, there’s the abstract:
This research investigated the pathways from math performance to the cognitive (worried thoughts) and affective (emotional tension) dimensions of math anxiety (MA) in high-school and university students. Using the PLS-SEM method, we identified a consistent dual-pathway mediation structure across both groups: Math performance is associated with affective MA via cognitive MA, and with cognitive MA via affective MA. We also explored whether working memory (WM) subsystems, based on Baddeley’s model, moderate these links and found differences between these two successive academic cohorts. In high-school students, phonological loop (verbal) WM moderated the link from math to affective MA, with this effect being evident only for those with medium-to-low capacity. In contrast, for university students, a dual-pathway moderated-mediation structure was found: the pathway to cognitive MA was contingent upon medium-to-high capacity in visuospatial sketchpad (representing image and location) WM, whereas the pathway to affective MA was contingent upon medium-to-high capacity in both phonological and visuospatial WM. However, simpler mediation models without WM interactions consistently showed superior model fit. These findings support a stable interplay between the MA components across the sampled academic stages, emphasizing the explanatory and predictive primacy of these core mediation mechanisms during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood.
Yes, we could all just stop pathologising perfectly natural fears and desires and difficulties and disappointments. We could all begin to address fundamentally simple problems with appropriately simple solutions. But then a very large community of education academics would have to look for a new line of work. And that would be a terrible shame, wouldn’t it?
One has to be a very educated person to make such a conclusion: “Math performance is associated with affective MA via cognitive MA, and with cognitive MA via affective MA.”
The Danger of Expertise: Highly educated experts can be susceptible to believing false premises if those premises support their worldviews or if they become overconfident in their own expertise, resulting in what some refer to as the “ignorance of the educated”.
I’m not sure they’re concluding anything false, rather than something trivial.
Thats a lot of words used to say very little…also, the total participants in the study was 129, which feels like an insignificant sample size if you’re going that route.
I also expressed myself several times ‘paid due’ to this topic, but as we are here yet again breaking spears, so one more time.
Overload and disruption of working memory during symbolic, abstract manipulations manifest themselves in fields such as mathematics, chemistry, and physics, particularly when equations enter the stage, programming, especially when debugging complex logic. The problem is abstract thinking (symbolic processing) under cognitive load plus evaluative pressure. [We are back in Australia, by the way, John Sweller, University of Adelaide.]
If someone insists on using the umbrella term “maths anxiety,” they risk obscuring what is actually a straightforward cognitive mechanism. At that point, it stops being an explanation and starts being a label. There’s a deeper problem here—one that shows up in maths, but just as well in other domains that require sustained, structured thinking.
Well said. Especially the first two sentences of the last paragraph.
Now, if only someone with authority would listen to what you have to say…
If you folks were able to wade through the entirety of the abstract and extract coherence from it, then I salute you. It is conceivable that part of the problem is that the tasks are not introduced in a way that children are given tasks without preparation that gives them context and understanding of what is going on. It may be the some classroom situations encourage pupils to measure things by personal achievement (some win, some lose) rather than through problems and investigations that encourage exploration and collaboration.
I wonder if the issue is similar to that of teaching children such things as gymnastics, sports or a musical instrument, something that seem scary or impossible at first, but can be approached step by step to gain confidence and understanding. People are anxious about a lot of things, but it does not have to be pathological.
No one who writes an abstract as unintelligible as that should be allowed to have a paper published.
To be hemidemisemi-fair to the authors, I think their jargon makes sense. Technical fields require technical terms. I think the problem is that their technicalities sum to no more than, and probably much less than, common sense.
Marty: Your charity is commendable. However, I think that one can make the argument that even for one in the field, it imposes a cruel challenge.
Well, I was only hemidemisemi-charitable. No question that, even accepting for argument the technical nature of the work, the title and abstract are hilarious.
But I do think one has to be careful to not simply take cheap populist shots at technical work. Proper academic research quickly becomes arcane, but the fact that Football Joe can make no sense of the research doesn’t make it valueless.
In an alternate world where Sir Humphrey worked in education academia…
I tried, in the past, to do some research about attitudes to mathematics with respect to primary school student teachers. Not about anxiety. There is a problematic issue with teachers disliking maths. They tend to reduce the teaching of mathematics contents at primary school level.
Click to access ED489673.pdf
Thanks, Solange. I agree, and certainly the issue of disliking, and fearing, mathematics is a huge issue among secondary teachers as well.
I am sure that part of the reason the Victorian CAS cult is so strong is because many teachers, much too poorly educated themselves, genuinely dislike and genuinely fear proper mathematical pondering. They are scared shitless to wander anywhere mathematical unless safely ensconced in their electronic wheelchair and, consequently, out of genuine but perverted goodwill, they believe that all kids are better in and wish to be in electronic wheelchairs.
I’m somewhat surprised by your comment. The implication would be that many individuals who dislike maths choose to teach it – why do you think they’d do so instead of teaching something else? (or does the system require teachers to teach a variety of subjects?)
Thanks, Bell.
What I wrote is that too many teachers in the Victorian cult “genuinely dislike and genuinely fear proper mathematical pondering”. I think that is true.
One can be be ok with, and even like, mathematics as a formal discipline, based upon clear facts. But that is not the same as liking hard mathematics, as being comfortable with and enjoying multistep problems and/or problems where some ingenuity is beneficial or essential.
What I see as good mathematics is barely visible in the standard curriculum and its presentation in texts and exams. So, I see no contradiction between my claim and the fact that teachers like, or like enough, the current, crabbed nonsense.
“Not learning how to teach mathematics:”
https://helda.helsinki.fi/server/api/core/bitstreams/ba4400eb-c3a0-42e7-808e-8d065181b89d/content
In many countries, primary school teachers have to teach all subjects. Liking it or not. Knowing it or not. Some non-mathematics educators also do not like us to teach mathematics in teacher education. They prefer to discuss naive theories of education and/or have classes full of “projects” and investigations (Boaler). Some mathematics educators even propose to discuss politics and “ethomathematics” instead of teaching maths. At the other side of the war, some mathematicians in maths’ departments also do not like to teach didatics to future secondary and high school student teachers. Teacher education is in a total mess at all levels.
A bit late to this one, but my two cents: maths anxiety is like a tulpa – it only exists because we keep perpetuating that its a real thing that is infecting our children, and apparently it is why we have so few teachers that actually *want* to teach maths (or something? I think saying even teachers suffer from maths anxiety is just an excuse for a shoddy curriculum without any maths in it… but I digress)
Unfortunately for me, the few I have worked with that do want to teach maths are all on the ‘down with direct instruction!’ express
As to the abstract, can anyone actually provide a succint synopsis? Because I sure as hell can’t read it without developing some form of anxiety. Such meandering nonsense, even by my standards!
Thanks, Fox.
I’m curious about your second paragraph. You really think there’s a correlation between wanting to teach maths and being an inquiry loon? My experience is limited, but it’s not my experience.
As for the abstract, I do think it means something. I spent some time trying to decipher it and I think it is decipherable. (Not gonna bother to resurrect my working.) Of course that doesn’t mean that the abstract needed to be so difficult to unravel. But, as I wrote above, I don’t think the problem with the paper/absract is that it is meaningless, but rather that it is trivial.
Hey, Marty
I do think there is some correlation between wanting to teach maths at a secondary level (at least in Victoria) and inquiry-based lunacy. Through my own experiences, as well as attending workshops and seminars and such, it does become a prevalent theme, unfortunately. I don’t have any real data to back it up, but it would certainly be an interesting study
I do agree the abstract isn’t indecipherable so much as it is deliberately wordy to obscure how pointless the actual ideas are. If they had any actual solutions, the abstract sure as hell doesn’t bother hinting at them. Yes, teaching kids maths well reduces their anxieties about doing maths. Who would have thought?
Thanks, Fox. I’ll ponder that.