Math Anxiety: Overcoming Obstacles to New Career Paths

Moderator:
Debbie Jelly, Development
Officer, Algonquin College

Speaker:
Catherine Rellinger, Seneca
College

Mathematics is not the issue; anxiety is the issue. Students are easily threatened by the fact that, in mathematical operations, there is only one answer. You get it right or you get it wrong. For some, this is a source of great anxiety.

To help alleviate the anxiety, teachers should provide their students with adequate rules for their learning process. Terms should be well defined, so that students have the complete information required for understanding. On their part, students must become more assertive in demanding information and guidelines. The gap between high school and post-secondary training simply exacerbates the problem. Furthermore, counseling for students who suffer from math anxiety is insufficient and inadequate.

Action:

• Counsellors at all educational levels must develop better skills to help alleviate math anxiety in women.

• Teachers must adapt their pedagogy to take into account the anxiety factor.

Coping with Microtechnology: Middle-Management Crisis

Workshop Leaders:
Joan St. Laurent, Graduate Student,
Department of Sociology,
University of Ottawa

Marilyn MacDonald, Ottawa

Because it replaces mental labour, the new information technology can centralize information and change the focus of decision-making. Information relevant to decision-making tends to become available quickly in a precise form. The decision making process is pushed higher up the authority hierarchy, to top-level management. Women are under-represented in management at all levels - particularly at the top, where jobs stand to be enriched by the new technology.

Top-level management will make the decisions on how, when and where new technology is introduced. The number of jobs available at that level is not likely to increase significantly.

It is imperative that, through training, retraining, affirmative action programs and other means, women committed to the advancement of women be equitably represented in top management. We must inform women and organize them around the issues; lobby political parties, unions and associations. The issue of how, when and where the new technology is to be introduced requires and deserves unified action by all women.

Action:

• Strategizing, on both an individual and collective basis.

• Individuals must retrain for top managerial skills, accept relocation, and aggressively embark on well planned career paths.

• Individuals and groups must become directly involved wherever decisions are being made on the implementation of new technologies.

• Job-evaluation methods and descriptions must be modified to fit the person, rather than vice versa.