The Role of students' emotions in their training as future teachers.

In the Teacher Training degree course, many students find themselves unable to cope with mathematical tasks and succeed. They are convinced that this subject requires intellectual abilities that they lack. Throughout their schooling, they developed a sense of helplessness and aversion towards mathematics that is currently transferred to their training as future teachers. Consequently, students fall into a vicious circle in which difficulties and negative emotions create adverse attitudes towards mathematics, and these emotional factors produce unsatisfactory academic performance that can linger over time. The aim of this study is to identify the students' emotional factors towards mathematics in the teacher training degree course for primary education to better approach this subject. Methodologically, the research is based on a qualitative design, complemented by a quantitative analysis of the ratings provided by 128 students. Results show that students consider it essential: to comprehend mathematics as a tool for understanding the world; to rely on their own abilities to solve mathematics by experimenting, manipulating, exploring and discovering; and to develop the ability of thinking and reasoning. Regarding their own abilities as teachers, a quite widespread idea among students is their own difficulty in teaching the mathematics curriculum through real and useful situations. Also, they feel unprepared to approach complex problems and some worry about their own possibilities to promote children's interests to solve mathematical problems or develop habits of persistence, curiosity, and confidence. Finally, future teachers expressed their need for acquiring and mastering the basic contents they will have to teach, and this, not only to transfer these contents to students but to gain emotional security to confront the profession.