O'Brien, S., & VanderSandt, S., & Johnson, E. D. (2011, June), Math Anxiety and Teaching Beliefs of a K-5(8) Integrated-STEM Major Compared to Other Teacher Preparation Majors  Paper presented at 2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Vancouver, BC. 10.18260/1-2--18325

\bibitem{asee_peer_18325}
  O'Brien, S., \& VanderSandt, S., \& Johnson, E. D. (2011, June), \emph{Math Anxiety and Teaching Beliefs of a K-5(8) Integrated-STEM Major Compared to Other Teacher Preparation Majors}
  Paper presented at 2011 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Vancouver, BC.
  10.18260/1-2--18325

Stephen O'Brien, Suriza VanderSandt, and Elizabeth Dianne Johnson.  "Math Anxiety and Teaching Beliefs of a K-5(8) Integrated-STEM Major Compared to Other Teacher Preparation Majors".  2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Vancouver, BC, 2011, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2011.  https://peer.asee.org/18325 Internet.  08 Jan, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_18325}
  Stephen O'Brien, Suriza VanderSandt, and Elizabeth Dianne Johnson.
  "Math Anxiety and Teaching Beliefs of a K-5(8) Integrated-STEM Major Compared to Other Teacher Preparation Majors".
  \emph{2011 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Vancouver, BC, 2011, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2011.
  https://peer.asee.org/18325 Internet.  08 Jan, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_18325
author = "Stephen O'Brien, Suriza VanderSandt, and Elizabeth Dianne Johnson"
title = "Math Anxiety and Teaching Beliefs of a K-5(8) Integrated-STEM Major Compared to Other Teacher Preparation Majors"
booktitle = "2011 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2011"
month = "June"
address = "Vancouver, BC"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/18325}
number = {10.18260/1-2--18325}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -  Math anxiety and teaching beliefs of a multidisciplinary K-5(8) STEM        major compared to other teacher preparation majorsA recent update on the National Academies report “Rise above the Gathering Storm”indicated that K-12 students in the USA ranked 48th in the world in terms of math andscience capability. Achieving an effective K-12 teacher population is critical toovercoming this problem, and was the first recommendation of the original report in2007. Having low anxiety, high self-efficacy and high outcomes expectancy in a subjectis important to becoming an effective teacher in that subject. The K-8 grade range is animportant grade range for students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math(STEM) subjects is K-8 because after this grade range both affect and capabilities arelargely determined. Therefore, an important outcome of K-8 teacher preparationprograms nationwide should be graduates with low math anxiety and strong mathteaching beliefs. Low math anxiety has been correlated with low science anxiety,allowing one measure to be a reasonable indicator for two STEM components. In thispaper we present the results of ~1000 measurements of math anxiety, math teaching self-efficacy (SE) and math teaching outcomes expectancy (OE) of ~250 K-5 teachercandidates. These analyses are broken down by specific disciplinary major, resulting in acomprehensive assessment of the relative preparedness of eleven different majors toteach math, and by inference science. One of the majors is a multidisciplinary STEMmajor referred to the Math/Science/Technology (MST) major. The MST major wasstarted in 1998 and consists of a substantial level of all four STEM components, as wellas integrated-STEM. Upon graduation, most MST majors are also endorsed for middleschool math or science (and often both). Before the MST program, STEM majorsaccounted for only 10-15% of the total K-5 teacher candidate population. Currently,MST majors alone comprise ~30% of the total K-5 teacher candidates. MST majors arealso required to pick a specialization (in Math, a Science or Tech./Eng.). An analysis ofthe measured quantities by specialization subcategory also yields interesting results.Measurements of math anxiety, SE and OE were taken before and after two requiredmath courses. The first course (MAT105) is a content course for education majors whilethe second course (MAT202) is a methods course. The instruments used were theRevised-Mathematics Anxiety Survey (R-MANX) and the Mathematics TeachingEfficacy Belief Instrument (MTEBI/pre-service). Measurements of math anxiety for thispopulation were previously reported but only compared STEM majors to theconglomerate population of non-STEM majors. In this study, the analysis is broken-downby major and specialization, and two other measurements of SE and OE are added. Atour institution there are eight non-STEM majors and three STEM majors. The non-STEM majors are Psychology, English, History, Woman & Gender Studies (WGS),Spanish, Sociology, Art and Music. The three STEM majors are Math, Biology and MST.A brief summary of the measurements is given below.   (1) Math anxiety:       (a) Many majors showed statistically significant longitudinal decreases in anxiety.   However, STEM students did exhibit substantially lower math anxiety.       (b) The lowest anxieties were exhibited by K-5 Math majors. MST majors   exhibited the second lowest anxieties but were statistically equal to K-5 Math.       (c) The highest math anxiety levels were exhibited by the non-STEM majors of   English (+30%), Sociology (+27%) and WGS (+25%), where he number in   parenthesis is the anxiety level relative to Math majors. Our data indicate that ~20%   of the non-STEM majors will have compromised teaching capabilities in math (R-   MANX>95) compared to approximately none for the Math and MST majors.       (d) The MST subpopulation of Tech./Eng. specialization showed the largest   decreases in anxiety (and SE), resulting in anxiety (and SE) levels equal to K-5 Math   majors. This suggests that T&E curriculum may be beneficial.   (2) Math teaching self-efficacy (SE):       (a) Using averages by major over the four measurement points, our data show that   SE is highly correlated to math anxiety (correlation coefficient was -0.87).   (3) Math teaching outcomes expectancy (OE):       (a) With two exceptions, all majors had high OE: (i) Spanish students had lower   OE and (ii) the Art-Music population had low OE before completing MAT202.The data presented in this paper is, we believe, the only comprehensive study of K-5math anxiety and math teaching beliefs by disciplinary major. Our data verify that STEMmajors are better prepared than non-STEM majors to teach math, and by inferencescience. One-in-five non-STEM students had high math anxiety compared toapproximately none of the STEM majors. The average math-SAT score for our non-STEM population is relatively high (~600) compared to the 2006/07 national average of~480 for Education schools and is on par with the ~614 average for Engineering schools,so this 1-in-5 fraction is likely larger nationally.The anxiety and SE levels exhibited by Tech./Eng.-specialization MST majors indicatethat a multidisciplinary STEM major may have substantial benefits. For example, MSTmajors only have 2-to-4 math courses (compared to 12 for K-5 Math majors), but afterMAT202 they are statistically identical to math majors. A possible reason for this is thatapplied math, motivated by realistic engineering problems, is spread throughout the T&Ecurriculum. Other aspects of the MST program could also influence the measuredquantities, and will be discussed. Lastly, MST K-5 majors would also likely exhibit lowanxiety, high SE and high OE in T&E subject matter, enabling them to truly be STEMteachers, including integrated-STEM activities, which may enable even further benefits.
AU  - Stephen O'Brien
AU  - Suriza VanderSandt
AU  - Elizabeth Dianne Johnson
CY  - Vancouver, BC
DA  - 2011/06/26
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Math Anxiety and Teaching Beliefs of a K-5(8) Integrated-STEM Major Compared to Other Teacher Preparation Majors
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/18325
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--18325
ER  -