Middle School Students' Personifications of Mathematics

• In Event: Fostering Learning: Relationships With Teachers, Mathematics, and Challenging Tasks

Abstract

Relationships with mathematics impact equity, access, and empowerment in thinking and learning. In our study, we sought to understand middle school students’ relationships with math and attributes of those mathematical relationships. We provided personification tasks about mathematics to 505 middle school students. They drew a picture of math, provided a description of mathematics, and described a conversation with mathematics. We examined students’ relationships, with results supporting: positive (12.6%), negative (58.4%), both positive and negative (19.4%), or neutral (9.6%) relationships. In our paper, we also describe attributes of these relationships. For example, positive relationships associated mathematics with beauty, hope, and struggle. Understanding the quantity and depth of relationships is important for making changes and supporting students.

Authors

• Clara Marie Stilwell, George Fox University

• Nicole Wessman-Enzinger, George Fox University