Factors that Motivate Students to Learn Mathematics

Sarah Klanderman, Michigan State University, and David Klanderman, Calvin University

What motivates some students to want to learn mathematics while others do not share similar motivation? Are these factors intrinsic, extrinsic, or a combination of both? To answer these questions, we adapted a survey originally developed by Tapia (1996) and later shortened by Lim and Chapman (2015). We administered the survey in multiple middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities. We obtained over 100 completed surveys for each of these educational levels. This presentation offers an analysis of these data, including descriptive statistics and confidence intervals for each educational level. For the college and university sample, we also provide comparisons among students majoring in mathematics or mathematics education, those major in elementary education, and those with a variety of other majors. In addition to the Likert scale items from the original survey, we explore qualitative data from a free response item. Join us to learn more about why students enjoy learning mathematics and later choose undergraduate majors in the discipline.

Refreshments precede the talk at 3:30 p.m. in NH 282.