How do students with low interest in mathematics react to tasks?: an investigation of triggering interest
Date
2023
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the reactions students with low interest in mathematics have to multiple mathematics tasks. Interest has been shown to influence students’ engagement, motivation, and achievement (Renninger & Bachrach, 2015; Hidi & Harackiewicz, 2000; Kang & Keinonen, 2018). Therefore, understanding what triggers the interest of students with low interest in a particular subject has been, and remains to be, an important goal for educators so students’ experiences and achievement are improved. ☐ My study focused on triggered situational interest, which is the first of the four phases of Hidi and Renninger’s (2006) four-phase model of interest. One of the ways that may be used to initiate or trigger student interest in math is through the tasks students encounter in the classroom. To this end, I elicited students’ in-the-moment reactions to math tasks that included three task features: realistic context, the opportunity to justify an answer, and a visual representation of data. Their responses informed my answers to the following research questions: ☐ Research Question 1: Among high school students who reported having low situational interest in mathematics, to which aspects of mathematical tasks did these students react? In what ways did the students react to the aspects and what explanations did they provide for their reactions? Which, if any, of the aspects were intended features of the focus tasks? ☐ Research Question 2: What are the different cases that emerge when considering students who reported having low situational interest in mathematics that frequently and consistently reacted to a particular task aspect across most, or all, of the five different mathematical tasks? Within each case, how were the students’ explanations for their reactions to that particular task aspect similar and different across the mathematical tasks? How do their explanations for their reactions support the concluding stances for that particular task aspect? ☐ I used a Two Cycle coding process (Miles et al., 2018) to analyze the transcript data. Through this process, I developed codes to capture students’ reactions to each of the three task features as well as their reactions to two task aspects that emerged from the data: mathematical topic, and perceived difficulty. I used the frequency of the assigned codes to answer research question one. I then used the assigned codes along with analytic memos (Miles et al., 2018) to select three student cases to answer my second research question. ☐ Students generally reacted in ways that aligned with previous research for the task features, but their explanations were not always the same as those found in the research. For the emergent task aspects, students generally reacted positively to topics they had previous success with and reported having a general preference for ease. However, there were exceptions to these trends. ☐ This study highlights the benefit of eliciting the students’ voices to learn about their experiences. My results illustrate a range of ways that interest can be triggered by concurrent aspects of mathematics tasks among students who report having low interest in mathematics. My results suggest the importance of task selection and task launching in a classroom setting. I suggest future research that expands on the current study to include students with higher levels of interest in mathematics, or by using tasks that are included in current classroom curricula.
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Keywords
Mathematical tasks, Student interest, Student voice, Triggering interest