The Effect of an Intervention Personalizing Mathematics to Students' Career Interests

• In Event: Innovative Interventions in Social and Cultural Contexts

Abstract

Personalized learning is a promising method of promoting relevance and context personalization has been shown to promote math achievement and interest when students engage in problem-solving tasks in the context of their popular culture out-of-school interests. Benefits depend on the depth of students’ knowledge about their interests and how extensively problems incorporate mathematical features of interests. We built on policy initiatives to incorporate career education into mathematics and evidence that middle schoolers can engage in personalized problem-posing tasks and tested whether popular culture- and career-personalized posing and career solving activities might benefit middle school, high school, and community college students’ math learning and math and career interests. Community college students alone obtained benefits, signaling boundary conditions for personalized problem-posing.

Authors

• Matthew L. Bernacki, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author

• Candace A. Walkington, Southern Methodist University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Vanessa Wanchanit Vongkulluksn, University of Nevada - Las Vegas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Meghan J. Greene, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Taylor Darwin, Texas Tech University
  Non-Presenting Author