Timed math fluency exercises—in which students are asked to solve a certain number of problems within a minute or two—do not appear to exacerbate students’ math anxiety, new research finds.
The study, published recently in the peer-reviewed Journal of School Psychology, is among the first to tackle the fraught subject of timed math tasks empirically. Its conclusions counter a widely held belief in math education circles that such exercises are harmful for students and could fuel math anxiety, which is linked to lower math achievement.
The findings still warrant more research. But they could help reframe the debate about timed math tasks toward the nuances of learning how—and under what conditions—they might be a useful tool for teachers.
“We did not find that timing causes math anxiety,” said Kathrin Maki, an assistant professor in the school psychology program at the University of Florida and one of four researchers who conducted the study. “I hope we can start a conversation about what that means about certain kinds of math tasks in schools—or, at least, not avoiding them because we’re worried about causing math anxiety.”
Why do teachers use timed tasks in math?
Timed math tasks have long been used in classrooms for a variety of purposes, but are most commonly associated with the elementary grades as students learn their math facts—simple arithmetic and multiplication times tables. These low-stakes drills, sometimes called “mad minutes,” are embedded in several widely used math curricula.
Fluency in math facts generally consists of two phases. First, students learn strategies that help them learn the facts and commit them to memory. Over time, they rely less on these backup strategies as their recall of the facts becomes automatic.
It’s the second component, reaching automaticity, that timed exercises are generally supposed to support. But they have long been a third rail in the math education community, with ardent supporters and detractors.
Some prominent math education researchers have long criticized them, asserting in math education journals and in publications aimed directly at teachers that they contribute to math anxiety. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, in a position statement on math fluency, asserts that “timed tests do not assess fluency and can negatively affect students, and thus should be avoided.”
Potentially even more powerful: the frequent anecdotes from parents, teachers, and students who say they hated timed math drills or felt that having to do them made them dread the subject.
On the other side is a body of research suggesting that timed exercises can help build fluency in math facts and other discrete operations. Timed activities, in fact, make up one of six recommended strategies endorsed in an elementary-grades intervention guide put out by the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse, although the guide said that such activities should be part of a coherent plan to improve student learning.
But little research directly assesses whether timed exercises contribute to math anxiety.
To study the issue, Maki and a team of researchers—Anne Zaslofsky of the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, Robin Codding of Northeastern University, and Breanne Woods, also of the University of Florida—gave a sample of 113 4th and 5th grade students across three school sites four different math tasks.
Two of the tasks consisted of simple multiplication problems. In one, students were explicitly told they had two minutes to complete the task; in the other, a proctor said, “OK, let’s stop there,” after two minutes of working on problems. On a second set, students were given more complex questions-—three by three-digit addition problems that required regrouping. For each set, the students had four minutes to work under the overt and covert timing conditions.
Students were surveyed about their levels of anxiety both before and after the tasks.
The study found no statistically significant differences in students’ reported anxiety between the tasks that were overtly and covertly timed on either the simpler or the more complex problems. Students generally did experience more anxiety, and answered fewer questions correctly, on the harder problems—a finding consistent with other research on complex problems.
How should teachers handle timed fluency?
The research leaves plenty of room for follow up. For one thing, the study’s sample size was relatively small. Other researchers should try to replicate the findings across larger and more diverse samples, Maki noted.
It’s also possible that students simply assumed they were being timed, even in the tasks where they were not explicitly told about a time limit.
For another thing, anxiety is a difficult thing to measure in an educational context. The study used students’ self-reported levels of anxiety—essentially a proxy—rather than direct measures of physiological symptoms consistent with anxiety.
Still, other researchers said the findings could bring more nuance to the discussion about timed tasks in the math classroom.
“I do think the findings are important and help us combat an unhelpful knee-jerk reaction that ‘timed anything is bad’ that has formed in some education circles,” said Nicole McNeil, a professor of psychology who studies math cognition at the University of Notre Dame. McNeil was not involved in the research. “The roles of timing and anxiety in math learning are complex, and depend on the student, the environment, the problem type, and the goal.”
How teachers structure timed fluency activities can make a difference, too. For example, comparing individual students’ times can feel embarrassing and demotivating for students, yet many students find purpose in trying to beat their own time in fluency exercises.
And while the exercises can help students gain in fluency, they are unlikely to help students who struggle with basic calculation, teachers have said.
Both Maki and McNeil also said it is probably counterproductive for math teachers to try to prevent any level of stress and anxiety in the math classroom. Learning new things can be challenging and initially uncomfortable—but small amounts of stress can also be motivating, they noted, and successfully learning new things ultimately leads kids to feel more accomplished.
For Maki, those deeper conversations are the ones the field should be having.
“We think that timing matters for creating fluency, but at the same time you want to be thoughtful about the tasks we have kids engage in,” she said.
