Date of Award
3-17-2020
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Educational Leadership, Ed.D.
First Advisor
Amany Saleh
Committee Members
Joan Henley; Joe Nichols; Robert Williams
Call Number
LD 251 .A566d 2019 R52
Abstract
Mathematics is considered one of the basics of education, but many have difficulty learning it. It is estimated that 25% of four- year college students and 80% of community college students have some degree of math anxiety. Several studies have identified math teachers as one of the primary causes of math anxiety. The purpose of this study was to identify, analyze, and classify those math instructors’ behaviors that are contributors to math anxiety. In short, what are the behaviors of a math instructor that leads to math anxiety? This study is phenomenological in nature with the goal of describing those behaviors. Only those students who have math anxiety as measured by the Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale (AMAS) were included. Furthermore, only the students who indicated negative math experiences with one or more teachers as being a prominent part of the reason for that anxiety were included. A total of 82 students had math anxiety that met the criteria established by this researcher and recorded responses of negative math experiences. After running those 82 responses through IBM SPSS modeler 18.2 Text Analysis, 11 categories eventually emerged along with a taxonomy that included the top four most common categories: Teaching disposition, Teaching methods, Didn’t explain and Pace. These categories made up 81% of the responses students gave in the questionnaire for teacher’s characteristics they felt had been instrumental in their developing math anxiety.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Rhoads, Matthew Allen, "A Taxonomy of Behaviors by Instructors That College Students Identified as Contributing to Their Math Anxiety" (2020). Student Theses and Dissertations. 425.
https://arch.astate.edu/all-etd/425
