Math is not everyone’s favorite subject, it is fair to say. In fact, the tension and worry that arise when attempting to solve a mathematical problem can be all-consuming for many people. This is referred to as math anxiety, and it can have a long-term negative impact on a person’s sense of worth.
It can be challenging for those who struggle with math anxiety to change their perspective from one of failure to one of success when it comes to working with numbers. For many people, math anxiety might therefore persist throughout their lives.
Yet, research indicates that if teachers address math anxiety in the classroom and encourage students to attempt to approach a problem differently, arithmetic anxiety can be reduced.
The concept of “mindset theory” was developed by US psychology professor Carol Dweck. Dweck observed that people may frequently be divided into two groups: those who think they are incapable of changing because they are lousy at something and those who think they can.
This served as the foundation for her mentality theory, according to which some people have a “fixed mindset,” which means they think their abilities are fixed and unchangeable. Some people, known as “growth-mindset” individuals, think they can modify and advance their skill over time with practice and effort.
Jo Boaler, the British education author and professor of mathematics education, adapted mindset theory to mathematics, subsequently dubbing her ideas “mathematical mindsets”.
All of this may sound good, but one of the problems with mindset theory is that it is frequently explained in terms of brain plasticity or the brain’s capacity for growth. This has given rise to criticisms of the lack of neurological data supporting mindset theory. This dearth of neurological research was the focus of our most recent study.
Usually speaking, there are multiple solutions to every mathematical issue. Depending on your taste, you can calculate the answer to the question “what is three times four?” as either 4+4+4 or 3+3+3+3 instead. Yet, if you lack mathematical maturity or suffer from math anxiety, it may be difficult for you to identify other approaches to a problem.We measured participants’ motivation to solve mathematical problems by asking about motivation both before and after each problem was presented. We also measured participants’ brain activity, specifically looking at areas associated with motivation, while they solved each problem. This was done using an electroencephalogram (EEG) which records patterns of activation across the brain.
In our research, we phrased questions in different ways to assess how question structure may affect both our participants’ ability to answer the questions and their motivation while tackling maths problems.
Each question appeared in two formats: one of typical mathematical teaching and another adhering to the recommendations of mathematical mindset theory. Both questions asked essentially the same question and had the same answer, like in the following simplified example:“Find the number which is the sum of 20,000 and 30,000 divided by two” (a typical mathematical problem) and “Find the midpoint number between 20,000 and 30,000” (an example of a mathematical mindset problem).
