Ethnomathematics and aboriginal student anxiety
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Mathematics anxiety has been identified as a barrier to learners who wish to enroll in post secondary education and training in Canada. We examined student beliefs about anxiety and their perceptions about how increased culturally-relevant mathematical content could enhance their feelings of efficacy in mathematics. We found higher levels of anxiety among students; and identified differences between and non-aboriginal students' views of how anxiety can be reduced. Introduction Mathematics anxiety is present in many learners, regardless of age, level of mathematical knowledge, gender or ability (Ashcraft, 2002). Mathematics anxiety is defined as a feeling of tension, apprehension, or fear that interferes with math performance (p. 181). Its most concerning consequence is the avoidance behaviour that results from high levels of fear. Fear of is a significant barrier to college student success. Perry (2004) suggested as many as 85% of students in an introductory course feel at least some degree of anxiety. Woodward (2004) suggested that anxiety is particularly prevalent among developmental college students. Anxiety levels among college students can differ on the basis of gender (Woodward, 2004: Zettle & Raines, 2000; Ashcraft, 2002) or among nontraditional, older students (Royce & Rompf, 1992). Bernstein's (1992) study of adults in a non traditional career programs found that men of African-American, Hispanic, Asian and Native American descent exhibited high levels of anxiety, as did women of Hispanic and Asian descent. Aboriginal student enrolment in post secondary institutions is of particular concern to government agencies and educational institutions in Canada as participation rates among students, particularly in and sciences are significantly lower than the rate for other Canadians (The Millennium Scholarship Foundation, 2004). In Canada, aboriginal is the term used to describe all persons of indigenous ancestry (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 2004). About 20% of people between the ages of 15-24 participate in post secondary training compared to 43% of non-aboriginal people. As a result, provincial authorities have given regional colleges a mandate to improve enrolment in post secondary and career training programs. One such college that has responded created bridging programs and developmental courses, including several in mathematics. As anxiety was seen by administrators as a barrier to student enrolment, curriculum in one developmental course was modified to include content. In our evaluation, we explored student beliefs about anxiety, and, in particular, how increasing socio-cultural content might affect anxiety. Socio cultural Learning Theory and Mathematics Anxiety A decade of research in education has demonstrated the benefits of adopting a socio-cultural perspective to education (FitzSimons, 2002). A socio-cultural perspective offers a different lens through which to view student success, curricular content, historical contributions and educational practices by recognizing that is not free of social, political, economic or cultural context. The adoption of an alternative epistemology that questions a dominant western discourse of as culturally neutral is recommended. D' Ambrosio (1999) is credited with the first use of the term ethnomathematics'. Ethnomathematics tak[es] into account the cultural differences that have determined the cultural evolution of humankind and the political dimension of mathematics (p. 150). Ethnomathematics scholars that have focused on particular indigenous groups, include Knijnick's (2002a) work with the Brazilian Landless movement, Meaney (2002) and Robinson & Nichol's (1998) work with indigenous Australians, and Ezeife's (2003) work with Africans. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".