Prospective teachers’ views their readiness to face math anxiety in the classroom

Abstract

Reducing math anxiety is an increasingly important part of mathematics teaching. There is a lot of research about the effects of math anxiety and how it can be reduced. However, Finnish prospective teachers' thoughts about their readiness for facing math anxiety in the classroom need to be looked more closely. This study focuses to find out what is the prospective teachers' knowledge about facing up math anxiety in the classroom, and how they see the topic should be taken care during the teacher education. Based on the analysis of eight prospective teachers’ interviews, we could conclude that the students expected that they were able to face math anxiety in the classroom with several ways. Nevertheless, they hoped that methods for facing math anxiety should be more thoroughly and clearly looked at in teacher education and thus facilitate their preparedness to face math anxiety in the classroom.