Sian L Beilock, Elizabeth A Gunderson, Gerardo Ramirez, Susan C Levine
4 min
This study investigates whether the math anxiety of female elementary school teachers influences the math achievement of their students. Specifically, the researchers examine if this influence is gender-specific, hypothesizing that girls are more susceptible to their female teachers' anxieties due to social modeling and the reinforcement of traditional gender stereotypes.
The researchers assessed 17 female first- and second-grade teachers using the short Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (sMARS). They tracked 117 students (65 girls and 52 boys) over the course of a school year, measuring math achievement using the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement. Additionally, the researchers gauged students' gender-based academic beliefs by asking them to draw pictures of students who were 'good at math' versus 'good at reading,' creating a score that reflected the degree to which children adhered to the stereotype that math is a male domain.
The study found no significant relationship between teacher math anxiety and student achievement at the beginning of the school year. However, by the end of the year, girls in classrooms with highly math-anxious teachers showed lower math achievement and were more likely to endorse the stereotype that boys are better at math. Mediation analysis confirmed that these girls' math achievement was negatively affected specifically because they adopted these gender-stereotypical beliefs, which were influenced by their teachers' anxiety. This effect was not observed in boys.
These findings suggest that math anxiety is not merely a personal impediment for the teacher but a social influence that can shape the academic trajectories of young girls. Because elementary education is a female-dominated field with high levels of math anxiety among practitioners, the study highlights a critical need to improve math training and confidence for future teachers to prevent the unintentional transmission of gender stereotypes to the next generation.
People's fear and anxiety about doing math--over and above actual math ability--can be an impediment to their math achievement. We show that when the math-anxious individuals are female elementary school teachers, their math anxiety carries negative consequences for the math achievement of their female students. Early elementary school teachers in the United States are almost exclusively female (>90%), and we provide evidence that these female teachers' anxieties relate to girls' math achievement via girls' beliefs about who is good at math. First- and second-grade female teachers completed measures of math anxiety. The math achievement of the students in these teachers' classrooms was also assessed. There was no relation between a teacher's math anxiety and her students' math achievement at the beginning of the school year. By the school year's end, however, the more anxious teachers were about math, the more likely girls (but not boys) were to endorse the commonly held stereotype that "boys are good at math, and girls are good at reading" and the lower these girls' math achievement. Indeed, by the end of the school year, girls who endorsed this stereotype had significantly worse math achievement than girls who did not and than boys overall. In early elementary school, where the teachers are almost all female, teachers' math anxiety carries consequences for girls' math achievement by influencing girls' beliefs about who is good at math.
Sam: [direct, acknowledging the limitation] That's the constraint that matters most. The study had only 17 teachers. Whatever the number of students, the number of independent teacher-level observations is small. And the design is fundamentally correlational, so we can't say the teacher's anxiety caused the drop in performance. The mediation pathway is compelling, but it doesn't establish causal order on its own. The timing, with the relation appearing only by year's end, is suggestive rather than conclusive.
Alex: [measured, reflective] What would the mechanism look like in an actual classroom? My guess is that an anxious teacher avoids harder problems or shows visible frustration, and the girls read that as a cue about their own potential.
Sam: [slower] That's a plausible reading, and it fits the social modeling account. But I'd flag that it is a hypothesis. The paper's data show the statistical pathway. They don't directly observe which teacher behaviors carry the signal.
Alex: [deliberate] Then what's the practical implication, if the sample is this small? [[RP_SECTION:practical-implications-for-education|Practical Implications for Education]]
Sam: [sitting back, broader perspective] The suggestion is that interventions aimed only at students may miss part of the source. If we want to close the STEM gender gap, the math anxiety of educators may matter too. And since most elementary teachers are female, this could be a widespread, easily overlooked channel for transmitting stereotypes. Future work would need to test whether something like math anxiety reduction training for teachers actually breaks the cycle.
Alex: [quieter, reflective] So the claim isn't about curriculum. It's about the emotional climate a teacher creates, and whether it shapes what girls believe about themselves.
Sam: [warm, professional] Yes, with the caveats we've covered. It's a small, correlational study, but it points to a mechanism worth testing in larger samples and with intervention designs. It suggests the leak in the STEM pipeline may start earlier than we often assume.
Alex: [brisk] If you want the figures and the method choices we skipped, you can generate a deep dive of this paper. The paper has the rest either way.
Sam: Thanks for listening.