Students are in need of meaning when dealing with mathematics in a school context. To describe meaning, objective and personal facets need to be distinguished. This paper focuses on students' perspectives in describing the concept of personal meaning as personal relevance of a mathematical concept or action. To conceptualise personal meaning for quantitative studies, a survey was developed that makes 16 different personal meanings assessable with reliable scales. Results from cluster and correlation analyses generally support the underlying theory of personal meaning. Exploratory factor analyses suggest two meta-factors structuring the different personal meanings into those showing an orientation to mathematics and to social inclusion, respectively. Future research intends to investigate the relationship between personal meaning and affective psychological constructs like motivation and interest.
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