A PROPOSAL FOR ASSESSING MATHEMATICAL ATTITUDE, APTITUDE, AND SUCCESS IN GEOSCIENCE STUDENTS

Math anxiety, commonly referred to as math phobia, is a phenomena where people experience moderate to extreme fear associated with anticipating or performing mathematical tasks, in some cases tied to actual pain and anxiety. Lack of math phobia and general high self-efficacy belief have been tied to success in STEM fields. Geoscience courses involve building and using a diverse skill set, with knowledge from chemistry, physics, and math all being equally important. Examples of the importance of quantitative skills include calculating seismic velocities in a geophysics course, balancing chemical equations in a geochemistry course, or quantifying the slope of a river in a geomorphology course. Despite these necessary quantitative skills, regardless of actual mathematical background, math phobia is often expressed by many geoscience students.

As supported by the University of Wisconsin System Teaching Fellow program, this project is proposed to find if students who hold poor attitudes about their math skills and preparation tend to perform differently than students with positive self-efficacy beliefs in a select number of geoscience courses ranging from introductory to advanced courses. Attitude assessment will take the form of anonymized surveys and interviews given at multiple times throughout different courses. The aptitude analysis will come from both self-reporting of students’ previous math classes and also from short assessments based on concept inventories of mathematical skills. The math attitude and aptitude assessments will be used in conjunction with self-assessments of student progress in the course along with overall course grades and selective discussions with the professors. The outcome of this study will determine if interventions dealing with math attitude and possibly math aptitude should become part of some or most geoscience courses. Eventually, a more formal and generalizable assessment of math attitudes should also be used to determine if and when interventions related to attitudes towards mathematics should be incorporated into geoscience courses throughout the curriculum.