What makes a mathematical task interesting?

Abstract

The study addresses the question of what makes a mathematical task interesting to the 9 th year students. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 15 students of purposive selection of the 9 th year. The students were asked to recall a task they found interesting and engaging during the past three years. An analysis of the tasks was made with respect to the context, cognitive demand, and task structure, while interview data were analyzed using the Theory of Didactical Situation (TDS) and Mathematical Task Framework (MTF). The students recalled a total of four teacher-designed tasks. All of the tasks offered a high level of challenge, elements of sharing and some freedom of choices related to the aspects of the tasks. The results showed that in most cases the students pointed out the target knowledge as the reason for a task to be interesting and engaging, followed by the way the content was dealt with in the classroom.

Mathematics Designed for Engagement: from tasks promoting situational interest to sustained positive mathematics experiences

“…recommend interest interventions including situational interest, problem-based learning, and utility value, but the practical implementations are yet to be fully explored. In Nyman's [43] study, students' interest was said to be prompted by 1) having mathematics in the foreground, 2) giving challenge, 3) allowing student in uence and 4) allowing students to present their results. Nyman's list aligns with the suggestions discussed above, as well as with a list by Attard [44] (2021), where Nyman's (ibid.)…”

“…As discussed earlier, modelling and real life relevance have often been suggested to promote interest, which may explain the assumption of the degree of real life context accounting for interest. Since this was not the case, it is worth remembering that real-life contexts were problematised by Sullivan and others [41], and not included as one of the features suggested by Nyman [43] and Cuddeford-Jones [45] to promote interest (see Figure 3). Attard [44] calls for the relevance and explicit links and value to students' lives, but is not suggesting manufactured contexts.…”

Enhancing creative reasoning through mathematical task: The quest for an ideal design

“…Tasks like this can provide challenges and require students to be persistent to complete [5]. Tasks with these are very important in order to trigger student motivation in finding solutions [16]. Students' resilience in completing this assignment model is needed in developing students' mathematical reasoning.…”

“…When faced with tasks commonly encountered in textbooks, they tend to try to recall existing facts, formulas, or algorithms. In contrast, tasks given by the teacher and rarely found in textbooks are completed using mathematical reasoning [1], [15], [16]. In this context, according to Lithner [17], mathematics teachers are required to have the ability to choose or design mathematical tasks that challenge students' mathematical reasoning abilities.…”

“…Tasks must also be able to provide challenges and require students' persistence in the completion process [5], [25]. Challenging tasks are needed to trigger students' motivation to find the completion of these tasks [16]. The active involvement of students in completing the challenging and demanding tasks is very much needed to develop students' mathematical reasoning [25].…”