She triggers crises at home, both on the side of children and parents, who are often dropped with learning techniques.
Who has never known this moment of loneliness in the face of an exercise given by a teacher, the gaze of a distraught parent as a bonus? This scene, lived in many families, crosses the eras without having a wrinkle. On the one hand, there is the child who blocks in front of the statement of the exercise, loses patience, is annoyed. On the other, the adult who tries to explain the instruction, sometimes gets angry, or ends up abandoning. Among all the subjects taught to students, there is one in particular which has made generations of students cry, and which continues to sow panic at homework. It’s simple, it is feared by many children, but also by adults. And it’s not just a feeling.
Kinga Morsanyi, a specialist in mathematical cognition at the University of Loughborough, and Carlo Tomasetto, professor of development and education psychology at the University of Bologna, studied the question closely. According to them, mathematics can even cause real “anxiety”. The two researchers devoted an article published in the media to it The Conversationtitled “Parents’ mathematical anxiety influences children’s academic results“. They started from an observation, according to the PISA 2022 report of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), which notably assesses education systems around the world, “Students share a higher level of anxiety vis-à-vis mathematics in 2022 than ten years ago”.
Some students even feel nervousness or helplessness when they have to solve math problems or duties. But in this equation, parents also have a role to play. Indeed, in their study, researchers Morsanyi and Tomasetto followed 126 Italian children from 3 to 8 years old to regularly assess their skills in mathematics and their anxiety in the face of this material, while also measuring the anxiety of math in their parents.
Through their observations, they have noticed that the mathematical anxiety of parents is not directly transmitted to their children, but that it still impacts their academic results: the more the parents are anxious in the face of math, the more children encounter difficulties, from kindergarten and up to 8 years. This link persists whatever the level of education of parents. Unlike reading, parental involvement in mathematics can sometimes slow down learning, especially if it is accompanied by unconsciously transmitted stress. Experts recommend that math stressed by math to change their eyes on the material and gain confidence to better support their children!
