Enhancing the image of mathematics by association with simple pleasures from real world contexts

Abstract

Those who market people or products choose their images very carefully. They create positive associations in the public's mind by photographing their clients with sporting heroes or national icons. In this paper we present a variety of evidence to show that a major and overlooked reason for teachers' use and choice of real world problems is to take advantage of this 'halo effect' to improve students' attitude towards learning mathematics. Analysis of interviews, reports, and results of a brief survey from teachers of middle secondary school classes indicate that they place a very high priority on positive attitudes and hence both choose and enhance real world problems to promote students' affective engagement through simple pleasures. Pleasant sensory stimuli, generally non-cognitive and peripheral to the situation to be modelled, are used to promote a positive view of mathematics. This is a good strategy for creating enjoyable and memorable lessons, but there is a danger that it may override more substantive learning goals.

Findings From the EASY Minds Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial: Evaluation of a Physical Activity Integration Program for Mathematics in Primary Schools

“…It is widely accepted that students are developing lifelong attitudes towards mathematics in Grade 6 (ages 12-13) 53 . Fortunately, students' attitudes towards mathematics are not fixed 54 and therefore innovative interventions, such as the EASY Minds program have the potential to positively influence students' attitudes and subsequently lead to increased enjoyment of mathematics, which may be a key strategy for addressing student disengagement 55 . Of note, a standardized instrument was used to assess the impact of the intervention on mathematics and as such, its content was not specifically matched to the content that was addressed over the 6-week study period.…”

Mapping Pedagogical Opportunities Provided by Mathematics Analysis Software

“…7, was teaching 14-to 15-year-olds and is amongst the teachers reported by Pierce and Stacey (2006). He was especially concerned to improve his students' attitude towards mathematics as a step towards improving their intellectual engagement more generally.…”

“…Such tasks have motivational value as they can engage the interest of students while involving them in valuable mathematical thinking and demonstrating the uses of mathematics (Pierce and Stacey 2006;RITEMATHS n.d.). For example students may collect real data of the height of a bouncing ball using a data logger and then use MAS to analyse this data and create a mathematical model (see for example Oldknow 1996).…”

The stability of learners’ choices for real-life situations to be used in mathematics

“…The literature [7,9,10,14,[19][20][21] renders that learners and teachers highly prefer contexts dealing with modern day communication technologies, modern technological gadgets used for information storage and security related to electronic transactions. Furthermore, fairly high preference was given to real-life situations related to finance and high status professions such as the engineering profession.…”