Math Hater: How One Child Overcame Her Math Anxiety through Self-Administered Art Therapy

Autor/in	Rufo, David
Titel	Math Hater: How One Child Overcame Her Math Anxiety through Self-Administered Art Therapy
Quelle	In: Art Education, 70 (2017) 5, S.6-10 (5 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0004-3125
DOI	10.1080/00043125.2017.1335527
Schlagwörter	Art Therapy; Mathematics Anxiety; Creativity; Grade 5; Elementary School Students; Role Playing; Self Expression; Art Activities; Homework + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Kunsttherapie; Kreativität; School year 05; 5. Schuljahr; Schuljahr 05; Rollenspiel; Ausdruck; Künstlerische Tätigkeit; Hausaufgabe
Abstract	Art therapists use pictorial image making to help patients communicate feelings through creative expression and cope with traumatic experiences through the artistic processes (Ulman, 2001). With children, art therapy is used as a way to discern their emotional states and determine their relationships to the external world (Edwards, 2008). However, children will often engage in forms of self-administered art therapy through their self-initiated creative actions. Math anxiety begins in the intermediate elementary grades where some children exhibit a "negative affective reaction to situations involving numbers, math, and mathematics calculations" (Ashcraft & Moore, 2009, p. 197). Testing situations in particular, often trigger incidences of math anxiety in young students (Hopko, 2003). To reduce the level of math anxiety in the classroom, the author decided to allow students significant creative agency in the classroom. In this article the author presents and discusses an example of self-administered art therapy that took place in the classroom as self-initiated by a 5th-grade student named Danielle (a pseudonym). Danielle began to take on a persona she called Math Hater. As Math Hater, Danielle would express her dislike of math and she even began to sign her homework: Math Hater. One function of art therapy is the use of role-playing techniques to provide children with modes of "self-expression and communication" (Landgarten, 1981, p. 104) where they can reveal their fears, desires, and fantasies. For Danielle, role playing materialized in the form of her Math Hater character. As Danielle was allowed to express her math anxiety through her drawings, her defeatist attitude began to wane and her creative work became more light-heartedly humorous and less dark. Eventually her alter ego, Math Hater, was relegated to the pages of her comics and she spoke less and less about her own feelings of inadequacy in math class. (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01