Valerie Fay

Mathematical Disposition

For this week's episode we decided to interview students from the University of New Hampshire as well as elementary and high school teachers around the area about their disposition towards math. We heard several different views of mathematics that gave us insight into how experience in the classroom can affect one’s mindset and motivation surrounding math. We explored how students and teachers identify as a “math person” and how they developed that identity. People tend to develop a perception of math depending on their past experiences, such as having a really great or a really bad math teacher, and it is interesting to see how these specific experiences sway one’s opinion for the majority of their lives. We saw how one's mindset towards math could impact their success in the classroom and how changing that mindset can be more beneficial to one's learning development. All three of us are math ed majors here at UNH, so obviously we enjoy doing math, and we are used to people’s surprised reaction when people hear us say this. We all grew up really loving math and have an experience that sticks out in our minds where our positive disposition started. Coming from a mathematics perspective, it was interesting to see the different reactions we got when interviewing different people.