The Effects of Mathematical Activities on Students’ Performance

The reason why so many students under perform in math at the secondary level is difficulty with the subject, lack of support, and boredom (Stone et. al, 2008). There is definitely an issue with the way we are teaching mathematics to our students. The purpose of this research study was to determine if students in career technical courses could better understand mathematics if related to their occupation of interest. The participants were seniors in high school, who did not do fairly well in math, and took these career technical courses to help in their decisions after high school. The problem researches found were that students did not have the basic math skills need to enter their career of choice. To address this problem, teachers taught students mathematic concepts but in context with the career they hoped to pursue. Researchers found that students gained interest and better understanding of math concepts, as well as showed an increase in the math portion of standardized test scores. This suggest that teachers must figure out some way besides lecture to ensure student achievement, whether it be through contexts, or allowing students to engage in learning math through a variety of ways.