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Interest-Enhancing Approaches To Mathematics Curriculum Design: Illustrations And Personalization, Virginia Clinton, Candace Walkington

Educational Foundations and Research Faculty Publications

Two common interest-enhancement approaches in mathematics curriculum design are illustrations and personalization of problems to students’ interests. The objective of these experiments is to test a variety of illustrations and personalization approaches. In the illustrations experiment, students (n = 265) were randomly assigned to lessons with story problems containing decorative illustrations, contextual illustrations, diagrammatic illustrations, misleading illustrations, or no illustrations (only text [control condition]). Students’ problem-solving performance and attitudes were not affected by illustration condition, but learning was better in the control compared with contextual illustrations. In the personalization experiment, students (n = 223) were randomly assigned to …