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    Exploring mathematical wellbeing across cultures: insights from diverse students
    (Springer Nature, 2024-09-18) Hunter J; Hill JL
    Across many countries, including New Zealand, diverse groups including indigenous, migrant, and marginalised communities, are under-represented in mathematics, as evidenced by achievement disparities and disengagement from higher-level mathematics. Both research and policy have focused on developing equitable education outcomes for all students. A key aspect of this is wellbeing, including within mathematics classrooms, which includes identifying classroom environments that enable wellbeing. This study examines mathematical wellbeing (MWB) across different ethnicities and genders, with a case study focus on students from Pacific heritages. Analysing qualitative responses from over 12,000 diverse students revealed that positive relationships in the mathematics classroom were most commonly associated with students’ MWB. Accomplishment and cognitive factors, including mathematical accuracy, learning new things, and understanding, were also identified as important. Minor gender differences emerged, with female students emphasising mathematical understanding, accuracy, and relationships more than male students. The Pacific student case study highlighted the importance of both cognitive aspects (learning new things and understanding) and relationships (peer and teacher support), uncovering an alignment between cultural values and MWB. This study empirically confirms seven universal values supporting student MWB, previously identified in Australian and Chinese contexts, suggesting that teachers internationally may align pedagogical practices with these values to support most students’ MWB. However, the instrumental values serving these universal values appear culturally unique. This research contributes novel insights to the field by examining wellbeing with a subject-specific focus through student-generated responses, offering implications for developing more equitable and culturally inclusive mathematics classrooms.
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    Diverse Students’ Mathematical Wellbeing
    (Springer Nature, 2024-04-18) Hill JL; Hunter J
    Supporting student wellbeing in schools is increasingly becoming a global priority. However, research and initiatives primarily focus on general wellbeing rather than subject-specific experiences. Given the pervasive levels of mathematics anxiety, negative attitudes, and disengagement in mathematics education, we argue for a more contextualised wellbeing approach. We define ‘mathematical wellbeing’ (MWB) as the fulfilment of values whilst learning mathematics accompanied by positive feelings (e.g., enjoyment) and functioning (e.g., engagement) in the discipline. We report on 3073 New Zealand Year Three to Eight students’ responses to a survey measuring their fulfilment of seven MWB values: accomplishments, cognitions, engagement, meaning, perseverance, positive emotions, and relationships. Students’ MWB was highest for relationships and perseverance and lowest for engagement and positive emotions; MWB declined from Years Three to Eight; females often rated higher MWB than males; school sociodemographic status was mostly not significant, whilst engagement and positive emotions differed across ethnicities. Research implications include understanding target areas to improve diverse students’ experiences and wellbeing in mathematics education.
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    Learning through language : implications in a mathematics class : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Educational Studies (Mathematics), Massey University
    (Massey University, 1997) Arnold, Phillipa Mareea
    Mathematics is a subject that can be said to be have a language all of its own. The language of mathematics, the language of teaching and the language of the students all impact on the mathematics classroom. With the ever-increasing numbers of ESOL and NESB students in our classrooms there is a need for an awareness of the benefits when we use language activities particularly in the mathematics classroom. The New Zealand Mathematics Curriculum has mathematical processes as a central focus. Communicating mathematical ideas is a sub-strand of mathematical processes. With these two thoughts as background stimulus this research examines the effect that learning through language activities used in a mathematics classroom have on student understanding and communication. Learning through language is active learning strategies for the classroom and is based on the philosophy that all teachers need an understanding of language processes. They can then build language-based interactive strategies into the teaching of their subject. Learning through language aims to help teachers cater for the language and learning needs of their students especially those from Non-English speaking backgrounds. The research findings indicate that the use of learning through language activities in the mathematics classroom has a positive effect on the willingness of students' to communicate in mathematics. There is also an indication that the quality of this communication has improved. Student understanding has not been affected by the use of these strategies, but it was difficult to draw any major conclusions based on evidence collected.
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    Learning strategies in mathematics education : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in Mathematics Education at Massey University
    (Massey University, 1994) Anthony, Glenda Joy
    Interest in learning strategies is particularly relevant to current curriculum reforms in mathematics education. The body of literature concerning the constructivist perspective of learning characterises the learner as being cognitively, metacognitively and affectively active in the learning process. The learner must appropriately control his or her learning processes by selecting and organising relevant information and building connections from existing knowledge. In order to assist students in becoming more active, and self-regulated, it is timely that we learnt more about learning strategies, and their relation to knowledge construction and effective performance. This ethnographic study examines sixth form students' use and awareness of learning strategies. Data was obtained from observations, questionnaires, and stimulated recall interviews. Case studies of four students provided descriptive learning profiles of strategic behaviours in context. Learning strategies are classified according to cognitive, metacognitive, affective, and resource management goals. Examples of students' specific use of learning strategies indicates that a wide range of strategies are employed. However, the use of learning strategies per se is not inherently indicative of purposive, intentional learning behaviour. There is a strong indication that the appropriateness and effectiveness of strategies relate to the learning goal and the task demands. Learning behaviours that contribute to successful learning include rehearsal, elaboration, organisation, planning, monitoring and, self-evaluation. In addition, more successful students modify their learning tasks, know when it is appropriate to seek help, and are able to adapt their physical and social learning environment to optimise their learning opportunities. Contributing factors of low achievement include: lack of relevant prior knowledge; lack of orientation towards mastery learning and an associated confusion about task goals; and inappropriate use of learning strategies related to monitoring understanding. Less successful students provide infrequent reports of metacognitive behaviours to control learning and employ ineffective use of help seeking and resources. The study provides ample evidence of passive learning behaviours. Students sample selectively from the flow of instructional stimuli according to their needs and interests, but seldom take action to adapt the lesson to their individual requirements. Specific instructional factors which appear to contribute toward passive learning behaviours are highlighted in this study. The present study provides evidence to support the proposed Interactive Model of Learning Mathematics. The influence of presage and product factors on strategic learning behaviours is clearly demonstrated in reports of the students' classroom and home learning environments. Success of new curriculum developments in mathematics is critically linked to creating a suitable learning environment. To promote higher-order thinking in the mathematics class we may require a less instrumental approach - one that transfers some of the burden for teaching and learning from the teacher to the student, creating greater student autonomy and independence in the learning process.