There is a clear tendency among college students to get strong fears when facing a algebra class. There must be some kind of deep fear when it is about learning algebra, and especially, when they have an intense fear to the possibility of failing the class.
This strong aversion is originated in the fear of failing, which sets the alarms and creates an state of constant agitation. This retroactive setting makes everything more difficult, since these fears tend to feed into one other.
Math learning, most especially at the college level is a process that requires preparation and continuity.
Math concepts and ideas settle upon each other, and missing links can originate a gap that is simply impossible to overcome. Many of the introductory college math course require a path of solidly learned concepts which are built over time, and that is something that simply cannot be improvised over time . The problem is not an easy one, because it is fair to say that very modest learning objectives are not typically fulfilled by your average college student.
One of the initial things things we need to do is discovering where is this gap being created. We can say that the college programs for teaching algebra and math in general make total sense, with abundant examples and solved problems, coming from textbooks and online resources.
But yet, in spite of a clearly well thought curricula you'll find that college teachers find that rarely the objectives are met in a satisfactorily way. They seem to not understand why students perform the way they do. In fact, taking into consideration all the resources put at the students availability (tutors, online resources, websites offering solved problems), it is simply hard to understand for a college math instructor.
The problems doesn't seem to be the structure of college curricula, but instead in some earlier stages. In fact, if student would come to their first college algebra class equipped with the tools and background they're supposed to, we would probably a full row of A's all the time.
But that is not the case, which indicates that our assumption is broken.
This is, student don't get to college prepared in a proper way. This lack of preparation usually involves lack of emotional readiness as well.
So, what is the origin of this Personally, I believe the problem starts in the high school years.
Kids learn some basic algebraic concepts early in their lives (fractions, numbers, geometry, etc) but theyýre exposed to this new "math objects" until they are 8th graders.
Then, at the high school level, they just get into the habit of memorizing, and not comprehending.
Most of the concepts they have already learned them way back during the early years.
All of a sudden, they're not learning more new things, they are just memorizing.
I think the key to the problem is realizing how little of new concepts is learned in high school.
There is a difference, in which students who took calculus in high school tend to do much better in their college math than those who didn't.
Is that because they "pushed" to keep learning about new math objects during the high school years which makes the difference? I think it is time to rethink how we teach math to our kids during their high school years.
Otherwise, all the efforts to teach math at college level at more or less doomed.
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