Opinion of Mathematics

What other says?

“It is a fact that, despite its utility and importance, mathematics is perceived by most

pupils as difficult, boring, not very practical, abstract, etc., and its learning as requiring a "special

ability" that is not always within everyone's reach”

“In this sense, we believe that the high indices of academic failure in the area of

mathematics demand the study of the influence of affective and emotional factors on

mathematics learning. Such factors could well explain the anxiety pupils feel when faced with a

problem to solve, their sensations of unease, of frustration, of insecurity, the low level of self-esteem

that they experience, etc., which often prevent them from efficaciously and successfully

tackling mathematics tasks.” (Ignacio et all, 2006)

What I say?

Based on the opinion above, I realize that there are special challenges that will be faced by mathematics teacher regarding to the affective domain. As likely defined in the first paragraph, those opinions about mathematics are the challenges. Furthermore, those opinions could lead the students into academic failures. It means that integrating the affective learning to the mathematics learning is very important.

I think all of opinions about mathematics emerge because there are experiences which influence people to have those opinions. Hence, to make good opinions about mathematics, as a mathematics teacher candidate, I have to be ready to facilitate students with such experiences that make students deal with mathematics.

The first thing that I would like to teach is about self confidence, self esteem and self efficacy. I don’t agree that learning mathematics is only for those who have the special ability. I think everybody should learn mathematics, because mathematics is really related to our life. That is the point which I would like to emphasize in my class later. I will treat the students to love mathematics by providing the learning process contextually and variously. Besides, I also would like to integrate the affective learning through the exercises. I mean I would like to design the exercise that include the mathematics problem and contains the affective learning inside. For example, in the learning activities, the students will be divided into groups so that they should be able to work collaboratively. Then they will be given a set of problem as the exercise in which such positive attitudes for being their model are integrated. Furthermore, for some topics in mathematics such as probability, I will be careful in choosing the example when explaining the material. As we may know that probability topic itself are firstly learnt for gambling purpose, I worry that the learning tends to give the students example to do gambling. Hence, if I have a class later, I will choose to avoid the application of probability in the form of gambling activity such as avoiding to use domino card in the learning process.