I recently gave my maths class a survey about how they view themselves as mathematicians. The results were interesting. Below I have shared some reflections from the data. There was a total of 28 responses from individual students.
How do you feel about maths?
1) I hate maths - 4) I love maths
43% either hated or disliked maths. I would like to dig deeper and find out why these children feel this way. My hope is that by the end of the year we will have a more positive result to this question.
Do you feel confident when solving maths problems?
1) I'm not confident at all - 4) I feel very confident
Does your teacher think you are good at maths?
1) No the think I struggle - 4) Yes they think I'm really good
I was initially surprised by this response because I thought more of them would have picked 3 or 4. Upon reflection I wonder if a better question could have been 'Does your teacher believe you are capable of achieving in maths'. The reality is, some children do struggle with maths, they know it and the teacher knows it. It would be ignorant for a teacher to believe a child is good at maths when clearly they struggle however hopefully teachers are believing their children are capable of achieving despite them struggling.
Do you like your maths problems to be:
1) Easy - 5)Hard
I found it interesting and reassuring that 36% wanted reasonably hard or hard problems. I assumed it would have been less. I suspect the 50% that selected 3 want problems that aren't to hard or too easy but somewhere in the middle like the Goldilocks Zone.
Overall, these survey results gave me some great things to think about. They have actually given me more questions than answers however that is a good thing and I'm looking forward to finding out more.
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