Brief relational mathematics counseling as an approach to mathematics academic support of college students taking introductory courses

Introductory mathematics courses (including statistics) are among the most failed courses in universities and colleges in the United States (Dembner, 1996a, 1996b; Mau, 1995). Traditional approaches to academic support focus on cognitive aspects of the student's approach and only incidentally address affective problems such as mathematics and testing anxiety. Because such affective conditions may be symptoms of underlying relational problems rooted in a student's learning history, I proposed a new approach that integrates best practice cognitive constructivist mathematics tutoring into a brief relational conflict counseling framework (Mitchell, 1988; Windschitl, 2002). I developed this into a brief relational mathematics counseling approach that explores students' relationships with their mathematics selves, internalized presences, and interpersonal attachments in order to support them during an introductory level mathematics college course. I hypothesized that using this approach, professionals tutors, who also took on this new role of mathematics counselor, could help underachieving students improve their approach to mathematics and avoid failure.;To investigate this approach, this pilot study was conducted in the summer of 2000 with a statistics for psychology class at a small urban commuter university in the Northeast United States. Of the 13 students in the class, 10 volunteered to undertake counseling weekly or bi-weekly. Over the ten-week course each participants had an average of 5 counseling sessions. The counselor attended particularly to the transference-countertransference dynamic between the student and counselor/tutor. In order to isolate constellations of beliefs and feelings related to students' emotional conditions or relational patterns affecting students' course outcomes, pre- and post-beliefs and feelings surveys were administered. To help access their underlying relational issues, counseling participants completed metaphor surveys at the first session and some changed during the course. Mathematics affect scales designed to monitor negativity were administered at every counseling session. As counseling proceeded, a student history interview protocol developed during preliminary research was also administered while sessions focused on mathematics and course management approaches. The resulting new approach to mathematics support helps both the counselor and the student become aware of mathematics relational patterns impeding the success of the student, and allows both to develop constructive ways to change behaviors both mathematical and relational.