What makes a mathematics lesson interesting to students?
Files
Date
2020
Authors
Dietiker, Leslie
Singh, Rashmi
Riling, Meghan
Nieves, Hector
Version
Published version
OA Version
Citation
Leslie Dietiker, Rashmi Singh, Meghan Riling, Hector Nieves. 2020. "What makes a mathematics lesson interesting to students?." Mathematics Education Across Cultures: Proceedings of the 42nd Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. online, https://doi.org/10.51272/pmena.42.2020-49
Abstract
How can we design mathematical lessons that spark student interest? To answer this, we
analyzed teacher-designed and enacted lessons that students described as interesting for how the
content unfolded. When compared to those the same students describe as uninteresting, multiple
distinguishing characteristics are evident, such as the presence of misdirection, mathematical
questions that remain unanswered for extended time, and a greater number of questions that are
unanswered at each point of the lesson. Low-interest lessons did not contain many special
narrative features and mostly had questions that were answered immediately. Our findings offer
guidance for the design of lessons that can shift student mathematical dispositions.
Description
License
Copyright 2020 The Author(s). Permission to reproduce an article or portions from an article must be obtained from the author.