Teaching physics at Loyola University in the `70s, Jeffry Mallow noticed something that disturbed him: Some of his students who were obviously intelligent and making good grades in other subjects were barely getting by in his course.
”This meant either I was a poor teacher or they had some sort of anxiety about physics,” says Mallow, professor of physics and dean of mathematics and science at Loyola.
Mallow rejected the first premise. ”I was confident I was a good teacher,” he says.
He began looking into the other possibility.
He was familiar with research showing that a large number of American students seemed predisposed to an anxiety about mathematics that interfered with their performance. He wondered if the same thing was true of physics.
Was there something simply about the idea of studying vectors, ergs and thermal couples that made otherwise bright and accomplished students so nervous that they had undue trouble grasping the subject and in the end were unable to do as well as they were capable of doing?
In addressing that central question, Mallow has gathered evidence that may explain why in high school many of us struggled with biology, broke into a sweat during chemistry tests, vowed never to go near a Bunsen burner again and considered physics a form of torture.
He believes that many students-particularly females-suffer from what he calls science anxiety, which discourages many capable persons-especially women-from pursuing science-related careers.
Science anxiety, Mallow says, stems from irrational fears that are fanned by false and unfounded assumptions held throughout this society. Similarly wrong-headed attitudes, he would find, exist in other cultures as well.
In this country, whether you`re male or female, he says, young people get the message from peers, parents, teachers and other sources that certain sciences are very hard and only for brainy types.
Girls, Mallow says, receive an additional message. They`re told these sciences are particularly difficult for them because boys` minds are better suited for the complexities of such subjects.
As a result, females have tended to avoid science.
”For a long time, national and international surveys have shown that significantly fewer females were enrolled in the physical and natural sciences,” Mallow says.
”That`s changing. There`s an increasing awareness that the disparity has been a function of society`s attitudes, which have discouraged females from becoming scientists. But the changes have been much slower in physics.” (His inquiry did not examine social sciences, such as psychology and anthropology.) Mallow says Loyola`s science enrollments reflect national figures. ”Last year, women students outnumbered men in biology here, but the number of male physics majors more than doubled that of females.”
Learning not to fear
Mallow has written a book about science anxiety, published in 1986 under that title, and through Loyola`s Science Anxiety Clinic has devised ways to alleviate it.
Mallow and Marian Grace, director of the university`a psychological services department, founded the clinic in 1977.
”Jeff came to me with the idea,” Grace says, ”and over the years we`ve developed a program that effectively helps students overcome their anxiety.” Students meet for seven two-hour sessions under the direction of a scientist and a psychologist, usually a male and a female. The typical enrollment is between six and nine students, two-thirds of whom have consistently been females.
It was his observation of this pattern that prompted Mallow to suspect that the incidence of science anxiety in females is greater than in males.
He has confirmed this by testing Danish and American students with a 44-question test designed by a Loyola graduate student in psychology to measure science anxiety. (The Danish students got involved after a group of female Danish physicists who were working on young women`s avoidance of taking physics in Denmark contacted Mallow, inviting him to conduct a cross-cultural project.)
The questionnaire was designed for male and female students.
”We administered it 99 students in Denmark and 226 students at Loyola,” Mallow says. ”We discovered females demonstrated more science anxiety than males. The level was lower for females in Denmark than for females here, but the Danish women were still more anxious than Danish men.”
Women can do it all
Stepping into the debate about the effect of environmental and genetic factors on males and females, Mallow is unequivocal about women and science:
”We think that if social and emotional obstacles are removed, females would be drawn to and do just as well as, if not better than, males in all the sciences, including physics.”
While this point is emphasized to female participants in the clinic program, the overall approach makes no distinctions between male and female.
”We teach skills needed to learn science,” Mallow says. ”We teach problem solving, how to take notes in lectures, proper lab preparation and behavior, how to take science tests, how to read science. Students don`t know how to read science. Look at their science textbooks. They`ll highlight every line.”
”Students think they should read science assignments like they do a novel,” Grace says. ”We tell them sometimes you have to read it slowly and over and over. We point out that much of science is badly written and that they should recognize this.”
Two of the clinic`s psychological weapons-cognitive challenging and systematic desensitization-sound as forbidding as anything one might read in a physics text.
”The first attacks the negative things students say to themselves that make them anxious. They`ll say things like `This is too hard, I`m just too stupid to understand.` We try to change the way they feel about science by challenging these negative statements and beliefs.
”We teach them to counteract the negatives with `I`m intelligent. I`ve accomplished this and that, and there`s no reason I can`t do well here too.`
”
The second approach teaches students how to relax.
”The theory, which is supported by research, is that a person can`t be anxious and relaxed at the same time,” Grace says. ”We begin by asking students to make a list of situations that make them anxious. For example, we ask them to describe their feelings the day before an exam or when a pop quiz is announced.
”We`ll deal with each item, beginning with the least intense and progressing to those which cause the most anxiety.”
Relax and enjoy
Students then engage in relaxation exercises.
”We use a 20-minute audio tape,” Grace says. ”A soothing male voice tells them to get into a comfortable position and close their eyes. They`re told to concentrate on their right hand, to clench it tightly, then relax it and notice the difference.”
The same is done for other muscle groups.
”You`ll end up very relaxed,” Grace says. ”We ask them to visualize a specific setting-a seashore, the mountains-to put themselves in the scene rather than watching it from above or afar.
”They must feel the hammock they`re lying in, feel the warm breeze, hear the surf. This is important because they`ll have to imagine they`re in the classroom. The more realistic the image, the more powerful and helpful it is.”
At one session, Grace will assign homework.
”One selection is technical, the other isn`t. We tell them they`ll be tested. We want to reproduce the feelings they get when this happens in class. At the next session they`ll get a quiz, but the focus is not on whether they learned the material but how they felt when they got the assignment and as they read the assigned passage.”
The aim is to practice cognitive challenging by identifying the negative beliefs and statements that are causing anxiety, then subjecting them to a rational critique.
”We do this as a group,” Grace says. ”Group support is important in helping people get in touch with what triggers their anxiety.”
Confront your `shoulds`
Challenging the negatives, Grace says, entails being aware of all the
”shoulds” people carry with them, such as ”I should get all A`s. I should understand science more easily.”
”These distortions come from perfectionistic and unrealistic expectations,” she says. ”We also confront `catastrophizing,` which is the tendency to go quickly and immediately from bad to worse in your negative thoughts. `I`m going to fail the test` becomes `I`ll fail the course,` which becomes `I`ll flunk out of school and never be a doctor.` ”
Mallow says formal evaluations have substantiated the program`s success.
But the praise from graduates can be more satisfying.
Consider the endorsement of Mary Ellen Smajo, who is studying for a doctorate in medical physics at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke`s Medical Center.
”In grade school, I got A`s in everything, and I was an honor student in high school,” she says. ”I planned to major in physics at Loyola, but in my senior year in high school a science teacher told me I couldn`t make it in physics in college and that I should take something else. That scared me.
”Sure enough, it was really hard at Loyola. There were only a few girls in my class. I was working really hard as always, but I was doing very bad, getting only 2 of 10 right on the weekly quizzes.
”I heard about the clinic. It was really helpful. I saw I`d been
`catastrophizing,` and the relaxation technique I learned really works. By the end of the semester, I`d pulled my grades in physics up to an A.”
Doesn`t it make you want to go back and give science another shot?
