Date of Graduation

1983

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the change of attitude toward mathematics of prospective elementary teachers in an undergraduate elementary mathematics methods course. Two groups of prospective elementary teachers enrolled at The Pennsylvania State University participated in the study. The experimental group consisted of 136 students enrolled in the elementary mathematics methods course. The control group consisted of 47 students enrolled in the elementary science methods course. During the first and last class meetings of each course, attitude scales were administered to determine the extent of attitude change. The Suydam-Trueblood Attitude toward Mathematics Scale was completed by both the experimental group subjects and the control subjects. The Askov-Trueblood Attitude toward Reading Scale was also completed by the experimental group subjects in a reading/language arts methods course. T-tests were used to determine differences, an analysis of variance was used to examine extremes, and a stepwise regression procedure was used to find predictors. Using a 0.05 level of significance, the following findings were obtained. (1) The attitudes toward mathematics of prospective elementary teachers enrolled in the undergraduate mathematics methods course improved. (2) The changes of attitude toward mathematics of undergraduate elementary majors and special education majors completing the elementary mathematics methods course were similar. (3) The changes of attitude toward mathematics of prospective elementary teachers enrolled in the elementary mathematics methods course were greater than those of similar students enrolled in the science methods course. (4) The changes of attitude toward mathematics of prospective elementary teachers enrolled in the elementary mathematics methods course were greater than their changes of attitude toward reading while enrolled in the elementary reading/language arts methods course. (5) The completion of the mathematics anxiety unit by randomly selected prospective elementary teachers enrolled in the elementary mathematics methods course did not result in a greater attitude change. (6) The best variable for predicting the attitude of the prospective elementary teachers after the completion of the elementary mathematics methods course was the pretest attitude score. (7) The changes of attitude toward mathematics of prospective elementary teachers enrolled in an elementary mathematics methods course were greatest for those students who had the lowest pretest attitude scores. Data from this study indicated that an elementary mathematics methods course is an effective vehicle for changing the attitudes toward mathematics of prospective elementary teachers.

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