Do Real-World Connections Make Tasks Catch Secondary School Students’ Interest? What Preservice Teachers Expect and What Students Really Experience

What is it about?

Can real-world contexts increase students' interest in mathematics tasks? How well do preservice teachers assess students' interest in such tasks? Our study shows that current contexts (Covid, environmental protection) can indeed increase students' interest in mathematics tasks, refuting a recent study. Surprisingly, we found that tasks with only a superficial connection to the context were the most interesting tasks for the students. In addition, we were able to confirm other studies that preservice teachers have difficulty assessing student interest. They underestimated how interesting tasks with real-world connections can be. However, they underestimate even more, how interesting intra-mathematical tasks can be.

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