Learning environment and anxiety for learning and teaching mathematics among preservice teachers
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Learning environment and anxiety for learning and teaching mathematics among preservice teachers Melissa McMinn1 · Jill Aldridge1 Received: 20 June 2019 / Accepted: 18 November 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract The learning environment has been found to be related to mathematics anxiety at a variety of educational levels, including higher education, but to date has not been investigated in relation to preservice teachers. It has been previously found that preservice teachers often harbour high levels of mathematics anxiety, and that mathematics-anxious teachers devote less time to the subject area, teach in less effective ways, and can even transmit anxiety to their students. Mathematics teaching anxiety is a construct separate from mathematics anxiety, and the relationship between the two has shown very mixed results. To date, the relationship between the learning environment and mathematics teaching anxiety has not been examined. This cross-sectional study in the UAE examined the relationship between 157 preservice teachers’ perceptions of their mathematics learning environments in a teacher education programme and reports of their mathematics anxiety and mathematics teaching anxiety. The learning environment was predominantly negatively related to mathematics anxiety across a number of scales, but predominantly positively related to mathematics teaching anxiety, indicating that the learning environment is of utmost importance in teacher education and must be carefully attended to. Keywords Learning environment · Mathematics anxiety · Mathematics teaching anxiety · Preservice teacher education · What Is Happening In this Class? (WIHIC)
Introduction Over the past several decades, research into classroom environments has constantly increased and been applied in a variety of useful ways. The classroom learning environment includes the physical space for learning, but also refers to the intangible features that give the space its feel or tone (Fraser 2001). These features of the learning environment have repeatedly been shown to relate to mathematics anxiety (Beswick 2012; Buckley et al. 2016; Cornell 1999; Fraser 2012; Haciomeroglu 2013). Given that past research has frequently found that many preservice teachers are mathematics anxious (Novak and Tassell 2017; Sloan 2010), and that this anxiety affects the way in which teachers teach and can be * Melissa McMinn [email protected] 1
Curtin University, GPO Box U1987, Perth, WA 6845, Australia
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Learning Environments Research
passed on to students (Gresham 2018), the learning environment of mathematics education classes should be of paramount importance to teacher educators. This study investigated the relationship between the learning environment and mathematics anxiety, and between the learning environment and mathematics teaching anxiety, for primary preservice teachers in two higher-education institutes in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE). At the time of the study, a major education reform was underway and, with a new
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