KENNESAW, Ga. | Jul 21, 2025

Rising Kennesaw State University senior Summer Funk decided to research the phenomenon of math anxiety among student teachers because she had personal experience with the topic.

Funk did well in math during elementary school, easily grasping the fundamentals of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and fractions. She later hit a roadblock, struggling through algebra classes, which shook the confidence she had built over years of mathematical success.

At KSU, a math education course under Paula Guerra, professor of mathematics education in the Clarice C. and Leland Bagwell College of Education, helped Funk see her relationship to math in a new way.

“She was able to convince me that there are not ‘math people’ and ‘non-math people,’ and most people can learn and understand math concepts,” said Funk, a graduate of Harrison High School in Kennesaw. “I had always considered myself not a math person, so I wanted to explore that more, especially with my past experience of having math anxiety.”

An elementary education major whose parents graduated from KSU, she is conducting this exploration through the Office of Undergraduate Research’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) under the mentorship of Guerra.

Funk is spending the summer surveying fellow education students – also known as preservice teachers – at Kennesaw State and other universities to get their definition of math anxiety, how it affects them, and how they manage it. Following analysis of the responses, she will interview some of the people who took the survey. Then she will write her conclusions on the research.

“Summer’s research has the potential to shed more light on a phenomenon that’s more common than the general public might imagine,” Guerra said. “More importantly, it can lead to solutions that create more confident math educators.”

Funk said the SURP project is the largest and potentially most impactful research she has done so far in her academic journey. Though she is still gathering information, the incoming data is interesting.

“One hundred percent of participants so far acknowledge that math anxiety is common among preservice teachers, meaning either they themselves have experienced it or seen it in at least one of their peers, so that really stood out to me,” Funk said.

Research into math anxiety among student teachers may lead to changes in education curriculums that acknowledge the issue and offer training to help overcome it, she said.

– Story by Gary Tanner

Photos by Darnell Wilburn, Jr.

A leader in innovative teaching and learning, Kennesaw State University offers undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees to its more than 47,000 students. Kennesaw State is a member of the University System of Georgia with 11 academic colleges. The university’s vibrant campus culture, diverse population, strong global ties, and entrepreneurial spirit draw students from throughout the country and the world. Kennesaw State is a Carnegie-designated doctoral research institution (R2), placing it among an elite group of only 8 percent of U.S. colleges and universities with an R1 or R2 status. For more information, visit kennesaw.edu.