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Designing learning personalized to students’ interests: balancing rich experiences with mathematical goals

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Abstract

Context personalization is an instructional design principle where tasks are presented to students in the context of their interest areas like sports, music, or video games. Personalization allows for understanding of domain principles to be grounded in concrete and familiar experiences. By making connections to prior knowledge, personalization may reduce extraneous cognitive load, freeing up resources for the acquisition of new ideas. However, issues with adding seductive details that may distract learners, as well as mismatch between in-school and out-of-school mathematics, must be critically considered when designing for personalized learning. We review the research on personalization in mathematics, interpreting conflicting results by highlighting key cognitive considerations. Personalization can be implemented at radically different levels of depth, grain size, and ownership. We give an extended example of a promising intervention for personalized learning, drawing from research on problem-posing in algebra. We argue that interventions designed to draw upon students’ experiences with quantities have potential to enhance learning. However, when the complex, situated experiences of students are mathematized, there is a tension between preserving the authenticity of their experience, and accomplishing desired mathematical goals.

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Acknowledgements

Thank you to Alyssa Holland and Brian Kuria for their assistance with the transcripts. We also thank the participating classroom teachers. The work was funded by the National Academy of Education’s Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Teaching and Learning, Southern Methodist University, 6401 Airline, Suite 301, Dallas, TX, 75205, USA

    Candace Walkington

  2. Department of Teaching and Learning, Southern Methodist University, 6401 Airline, Suite 301, Dallas, TX, 75205, USA

    Carole A. Hayata

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  1. Candace Walkington
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  2. Carole A. Hayata
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Correspondence to Candace Walkington.

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Walkington, C., Hayata, C.A. Designing learning personalized to students’ interests: balancing rich experiences with mathematical goals. ZDM Mathematics Education 49, 519–530 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-017-0842-z

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