The Tuskegee Partnership for Personal Authenticity in College Mathematics

Tuskegee University, Tuskegee Institute AL

Investigators

Abstract

Each year, a large number of students take pre-calculus in college, many of whom struggle to see the relevance of the content. Toward making mathematics learning more motivating and personally meaningful to students, this project will engage undergraduates in directly connecting pre-calculus to their personal lives through topics that they choose to examine. Project implementation and research activities will take place in sections of pre-calculus taught at Tuskegee University, Southern Union State Community College, and Chattahoochee Valley Community College, under the leadership of a multi-disciplinary team comprised of an education researcher, mathematicians, mathematics instructors, and a college statistics faculty member. Sections of pre-calculus at all three institutions will serve as implementation and comparison groups. Students in the implementation sections will use technology to investigate complex, realistic data and focus on the connection of key mathematical ideas to those data. The project team will study the implementation activities as a way to immerse students more fully in the mathematics, to strengthen the relevance of the mathematics to their lives, and to improve their views of mathematics, their mathematical understanding, and their achievement. Using a quasi-experimental design with pre- and post-assessments, the project will address the following research questions: (1) Do students using mathematics tasks situated in personally authentic contexts exhibit more positive attitudes towards and beliefs about mathematics than students using teacher-selected contextual units and those not using unit projects? If so, to what extent? (2) Do students using mathematics tasks situated in personally authentic contexts exhibit greater intrinsic motivation to learn mathematics than students using teacher-selected contextual units and those not using unit projects? If so, to what extent? (3) Do students using mathematics tasks situated in personally authentic contexts perform better on standardized course final exams than students using teacher-selected contextual units and those not using unit projects? If so, to what extent? Are the course pass rates (% of students who complete the course that achieve an A, B, or C) in those courses higher? If so, to what extent? (4) Does the project work of students using mathematics tasks situated in personally authentic contexts show greater mathematical understanding in the form of valid connections made between mathematical and real-world representations compared to the project work of students using teacher-selected contextual units? If so, to what extent? This study will contribute to the knowledge base about ways to enhance students' understanding and appreciation of content connections within mathematics, across disciplines, and to life outside of formal schooling.