Tackling Anxiety in Primary Mathematics Teachers

Adults often have a love-hate relationship with mathematics like marmite- but those feelings come from previous success or failure with the subject. Karen tackles those with less than positive concerns about the subject head-on.

Karen Wicks has produced a thorough review of the issues around mathematics anxiety for adult learners’ intent on teaching. This carefully structured text will be helpful for anyone teaching mathematics to initial teacher training students....

-- Mary Briggs, Oxford Brookes University

This is an excellent, well-theorised and practical book that is written with precision and clarity by a highly experienced teacher-educator who is well-versed in supporting pre-service, and more experienced, teachers to overcome any feelings of anxiety they may have about mathematics.

She draws on her own research, as well as that of significant others in the field, to discuss reasons why many people experience anxiety in this area, and potential effects on pupils’ learning when teachers are anxious. The author sets out a range of practical strategies that can support teacher-educators to enable pre-service, and other, teachers to overcome mathematics-related anxiety and know how to teach their pupils from an assured, well-informed position so that they can inspire self-belief in their own pupils as confident learners of mathematics.

-- Janice Wearmouth, Professor of Education, University of Bedfords