Still reflecting on students' beliefs and attitudes about mathematics

During my teaching career I spent a great deal of time reflecting on the attitudes that students developed toward mathematics. That hasn't changed in retirement.

So now I am studying students' beliefs and attitudes and teachers' reflective practice in my Master's thesis with Dr. Christine Suurtamm as my academic supervisor.

During the Ontario-based Math 4 the Nines project, I, and two other teachers of grade 9 applied mathematics worked with a graduate student to developed and administered a before-and-after student survey on beliefs and attitudes about mathematics. A change-analysis of the survey revealed some interesting results that gave us pause to think and reflect.

In my research study, entitled Informing mathematics teachers’ reflectivity with student surveys on affective domain, I am inviting secondary math teachers to talk about their reflective practices, with a focus on the information gathered through a before-and-after student survey on beliefs and attitudes about mathematics (see below).

Participation in this study will involve a 30 to 40-minute Zoom interview at the beginning of the semester on reflective practices. Participants will then be invited to offer their students an online survey on belief and attitudes about mathematics. I will provide a Google Form for you to copy*. The survey will take about 10 minutes at the beginning of the semester and again at the end of the semester. A before-and-after change-analysis will be automatically generated. At the end of the semester, participating teachers will be invited to a second 30 to 40-minute Zoom interview and a 45-minute online Zoom focus group.

*NOTE: By making a copy of the Google Form, you and you alone will have access to the student data. Neither my supervisor nor I will have any access to student data or student information.

I appreciate that there are added time pressures on classroom teachers these days but if you are interested in participating or would like more information, please send me a DM @BDMcLaurin or an email to bmcla077@uottawa.ca or bruce.mclaurin@gmail.com

Thank you for your interest.

~Bruce

Sample items from the student survey on Beliefs and Attitudes about Mathematics

1.     The math that I learn in school is mostly facts and procedures that have to be memorized.

2.     In math you can discover things on your own.

3.     Making mistakes in math helps me learn.

Sample results from the Google Form survey

Sample results from the automated change-analysis