Vol. 5 Swars, S. L., Stinson, D. W., & Lemons-Smith, S. (Eds.). (2009). Proceedings of the 31 st annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. Atlanta, GA: Georgia State University. 363 EXPLORING THE CHANGING PERCEPTION OF MATHEMATICS AMONG ELEMENTARY TEACHER CANDIDATES THROUGH DRAWINGS Megan Burton University of South Carolina Burton3@mailbox.sc.edu Elementary teacher candidates enrolled in a mathematics methods course were asked to “draw math” at the beginning and end of the semester. Findings display the vision of mathematics that teacher candidates have before and after exploring teaching methods and implementing these methods with elementary students. In addition, it examines the specifics of the changes that occurred during the semester of methods and field placement experience. Background What is math? Often people reflect back to their vision of school mathematics, while others reflect upon its relevance to the real world when this question is asked. Vinter (1999) found that teachers often struggle to find the application of much of the math they teach. This can be due to the lack of meaningful experience with the content taught in the elementary grades (Ball & Bass, 2000). In addition to lack of experience with math, many elementary teacher candidates have high levels of mathematics anxiety (Swars, 2006). These factors can affect the impression of mathematics that teachers give to their students. Through examining their own perceptions of mathematics, teachers and teacher candidates can begin to explore how to deepen their own understanding, overcome anxiety, and connect the content to elementary students. This article documents an elementary mathematics methods course, which begins by asking teacher candidates to draw math and write a few sentences describing the drawing. The drawings often involved students communicating and reflecting upon their emotions and past experiences associated with the content, including mathematics anxiety. In addition it became a theme of the course throughout the semester, inviting students to revisit their perceptions as various methods and content were introduced. This simple task provided insight into the perceptions teacher candidates bring to their teacher preparation programs and the impact that positive experiences with students and content can make upon these perceptions. Drawing Student drawings have been used to examine students’ perceptions about various content areas for years. In literacy, drawings of reading and writing have been used to understand their perceptions of the subject areas (McKay & Kendrick, 2001). Students’ impressions and attitudes of scientists and science have been studied in many elementary and teacher candidate classrooms in order to understand student perceptions (Thompson et al., 2002). Drawing images before writing or verbalizing ideas can foster more creative responses and help generate ideas, because often language can slow down the creative process (Caldwell & Moore, 1991). Ideas can be explored through drawing without the cognitive demands often found when using language. Art is often used in therapy, because thoughts and emotions can be expressed vividly through images (Lusebrink, 2004). These same techniques can be useful in supporting meta-cognition and addressing negative emotions often tied to mathematics by elementary teacher candidates. Drawings by teacher candidates of various subject areas can reveal dispositions, attitudes, and experiences related to a subject area. These drawings allow the artist to establish and reflect upon these attitudes and experiences in a non-threatening way (Rule & Harrell, 2006).