Hamukoto P.T
201606353
English for Academic Purpose
A discussion of mathematics as a hidden secret to understanding the world
Group D
2016
Paulus, P.P’
Contents
Introduction 2
Mathematics Anxiety 3
Anxiety in Schools 3
Parents’ support 4
Environment related factors 4
Conclusion 5
Reference 6
A discussion of Mathematics as a hidden secret to understanding the world
Introduction
Courant, (1996) discussed mathematics as ‘an old, broad and deep discipline field of study’. A large extent, the world such as students and many of their teachers tend to define mathematics in terms of what is being learned in mathematics courses which lead/cause poor performance because these course focus on mathematics as an interdisciplinary language and tool. Mathematics as a formal area of teaching and learning was developed about 5000 years ago by the Sumerians. It was done at the same time as they developed reading and writing. However, the roots of mathematics go back much more than 5000 years.
Based on the education researcher, Schulman (1987) Observed teachers trying to implement reforms with limited success. Sometimes changes are made more cosmetic that substantive (e.g., more students discussion and group active), while failing to get at the heart of the mathematics. Since the renaissance, every century has been the solution of more mathematical problems than the century before and yet many mathematical problems both major and minor, still unsolved. Prizes are often awarded for the solution to a long-standing problem, receive considerable attention. Unsolved problem remain in multiple domains including algebra, graphs, algebraic, geometries and miscellaneous unsolved problems.
Mathematics has emphasized like language most of students have been failed in mathematics as a difficult subject and majority of people fail in mathematics. By this problem the great deal of time, money effort and power of the nation subject matter, curriculum refineries available problem solving method extra activities affect study mathematics in every sector, as well as state is facing the challenges with problems of failing examination. According to the National Council of Teacher (1990), People are suffering by various problems and facing the same challenge of examination being failure in mathematics. There are main influencing factors to unhide and have a better understanding in mathematics courses.
Mathematics Anxiety
Mathematics anxiety is one of the vital aspects of learning and understanding learning mathematics. Mathematics anxiety is a negative feeling to mathematics leaning process. Which is normally known to forget and confidence in subject matter. It affects in mathematics learning process. Also it touches the subjects pass rate in mathematics examination. Mathematics anxiety was emphasized as a responsible for failing in understanding the subject. Similarly,( Lewin, 1991), argued that negative explanation about mathematics from the teacher’s side, parents and other person created fruition and anxiety and ready to learn meaningful way.
Anxiety in Schools
Belief has an effect on the person’s behavior and results in the person either at-tempting to achieve the outcome or losing motivation and not attempting. Therefore, a person with high self-efficacy believes she is good at something, exerts more effort, perseveres when difficulty arises and chooses to engage in similar activities in the future (Bandura & Schunk 1981). This leads to the highly self-efficacious person having high future performance, positive affect, and continuous engagement in said behavior, whereas the low self-efficacious person will have poor future performance, negative affect, and avoidance (Bandura, 1981) as he stated it is difficult to achieve much while fighting self-doubt. A meta-analysis of gender and math anxiety concludes that, averaged across all samples, women report experiencing more than mathematics anxiety than men (Fennema, 1989). Although these higher levels of mathematics anxiety do not appear to result in a gender difference in performance, one reason these higher levels of mathematics anxiety may explain why fewer women enroll in elective mathematics courses, choose mathematics-related majors in college, or select mathematics-related careers.
Parents’ support
Do parents know they matter? Parents’ support is one of the important aspects of parent’s factors studying mathematics. Parents who play supportive role too their children learning and it is helpful for students’ achievement and changing behavior. Parents’ support can play an important role at all the stages of education. Schools can befit from positive partnership with parents by involving decision making process that affects students pass in mathematics. Most parents of public schools are illiterate, as they cannot able to support children in learning mathematics. Parents’ encouragement can also positively impact mathematics self-efficacy, and thus influence mathematics anxiety. The level of perceived or actual encouragement has an effect on not only the child’s self-efficacy, but also their interest in mathematics careers as adolescents and their actual selection of mathematics-related major in colleges. And children of those families are not interested to learn mathematics due to family support. Consequently, students did not pass mathematics in secondary levels. So students understand mathematics is low. Bandura (1993) added that family support plays a role in children’s education. The researcher concluded that those students who could not able take support from their families, they fail in mathematics. Hence one major cause of low students pass rate mathematics in school level.
Environment related factors
The last aspect, believed in learning and understanding mathematics as a hidden secret to the world. Environment related factor refers teaching learning environment and home environment. The overall consensus of the literature in this area is that parents and teachers influence children’s levels of mathematics. This affects them differently. If some believe that no one knows mathematics well in the community or no one scores high than others in the environment, there will be no challenge of learning or studying because have already that believe of no one is better than anyone. The closeness of teachers can also be the factor and reason of failing mathematics. Students can no longer pay much attention to their teachers during their sessions. Moreover, unqualified teachers can also be involved. Students who are better in mathematics can fail to respect the unqualified and influence others who do not understand because they might think that they are at the same level due to low or unclear information they provide during their classes.
Conclusion
It comes to the conclusion that people tend to have difficulty in mathematics due to their own believe and understanding in terms of what is being learned in mathematics courses which cause the high percentage of mathematics failure in the world. There are also a number of intermingled factors that are detrimental to low performance public school students in mathematics. The under recognition of students need and interest with their pre-existing level of knowledge, skills forwards mathematical concepts are the major determining factors of lower achievement in mathematics. Students’ interest and positive feeling of mathematics increase the pass rate. Parents’ Meaningful engagement with quality time for helping to learn to the students at home. Due to poor economics is another pertinent cause of low performance . Hack of parent’s awareness, interest of the subject matter affects their children to study other subjects. So, it should be eradicate barriers factors influencing to learn mathematics and make mathematics learning enjoyable in the context.
Reference
Bandura, A. (1993). Perceived self-efficiency in cognitive development and functioning.
Educational Psychologist, 28,117-148.
Courant, R. (1996). Variational methods for the solution of problems of equilibrium and
vibrations. Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society
Fennema, E. (1989).The study of affect and mathematics: A proposed generic model for research . In D.B. McLeod & V.M. Adams (Eds). Affect mathematics Problem Solving: A New Perspective(pp.205-219). New York: Springer.
Lewin, L. (1991). Structural Properties of Polylogarithms. Providence, RL:
Amer.Math.Soc, pp. 287-299.
National Council of Teacher of Mathematics. (1990). Journal for Research in
Mathematics Education. Retrieved from htt://www.jstor.org/stable/749527
Schulman, L. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard
Educational review, 57, 1-22.