Previous experiences with mathematics, particularly negative ones, can influence an individual’s attitudes toward mathematics. Children’s first experiences with mathematics are often in their childcare settings. Elementary teachers appear to have more mathematics anxiety than other professionals, but the level of mathematics anxiety among childcare providers is not known. The presence of mathematics anxiety correlates with lower teacher self-efficacy or the teacher’s belief of how effective he/she is in influencing a student’s learning. Grounded in Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy, this study examined the level of mathematics anxiety and teacher self-efficacy among 122 licensed Utah childcare providers in center and family home childcare. Providers responded to a survey assessing their attitudes about mathematics, feelings of teacher self-efficacy, frequency of developmentally appropriate mathematics and reading activities in the childcare program, and demographic information. Descriptive statistics, correlations, and one-way ANOVAs were calculated. Results indicate that the participants reported more favorable than anxious attitudes toward mathematics as well as moderately high feelings of teacher self-efficacy. There were no statistically significant differences in mathematics anxiety or teacher self-efficacy by the type of childcare provided, provider’s level of education, or years of experience. Results of the ANOVAs revealed that the best predictors of mathematics anxiety were provider attitudes toward reading/literacy as well as the number of developmentally appropriate mathematics and reading activities provided. As providers showed an increase in favorable attitudes toward reading/literacy, they also expressed less mathematics anxiety. This is the first study of its kind to assess these variables among childcare providers.

The purpose of the present investigation is to evaluate students’ wish to become experts of agriculture, their choosing motives, factors and future expectations. The object of this investigation – first year full-time and correspondence course students of stockbreeding technologies of Lithuanian Veterinarian Academy and first year students of agronomy, who wish to get agricultural education in Lithuanian University of Agriculture. The investigation aimed to find out students’ motivation of choosing academic agricultural studies, its significance and future expectations. The technique of the research includes literature review, interviewing students of different studying programs by filling in questionnaires, and statistical data analyses. The goal of the present paper is to analyze demand change of high quality specialists in agriculture, specialist training dynamics and to define the main motives or factors determining choice of agrarian academic studies. Besides, there was a task to compare chosen studies’ dependence upon students’ dwelling-place, study form, and program. Conclusions: the main choosing motives of the university students’ were social-economical, i.e. ‘Possibility to get a diploma of high education’ and ‘I wanted to study at high school’. Significant importance while choosing agrarian academic studies was played by professional motives. The main factors stimulating students to choose agriculture were ‘I was good at biology at school’ or ‘I have experience in... [to full text]