Making mathematics meaningful: An investigation into middle years students engagement with problem based learning

Only 0.4% of Australian university students graduate with mathematics compared with the OECD average of 1% which leaves Australia vulnerable to achieving its economic and knowledge-based aspirations (Praeger, 2009). Middle Years students often do not see the value and usefulness of mathematics and so do not pursue higher level mathematics in senior schooling and at university. The aim of this project was to explore how Middle Years students engaged with Mathematics as they solved a community issue. Working with local Council and USC experts 27 students in Years 5-9 surveyed their peers to ascertain what young people wanted for a proposed Nambour Youth Activity Space, analysed the data, and reported their findings to the local council. The students analysed the data using the statistical investigation cycle and the main themes that were identified were youth safety and community social spaces. Contrary to the Council’s proposal for a single use skate park, the students recognised the need for a youth space that not only provided recreational facilities for themselves as well as the wider community but also offered some safety in the form of casual adult surveillance. As the students engaged in their research project, I collected data on their use of mathematics using the tools of journal observations, reflections, semi-structured interviews, video recordings and samples of their work. My purpose in doing this was to investigate how the Middle Years students used mathematics to problems solve within a real-life context. My findings highlighted that the students misunderstood mathematical concepts such as mean, median, mode and percentages that had not been identified during classroom teaching. The implication for this research is that some students have difficulty with the transference of classroom knowledge into real world contexts