Improving Mathematics: Surveying Students Attitudes

Our Action research has been progressing this year despite the many interruptions this year has provided. Online learning proved to be a challenge but has provided many learning opportunities for our learning community.

I have become a data nerd this year and this seemed the perfect opportunity to dig a little deeper into understanding how data helps to understand my students. I recently asked my students to complete this data survey so that I can present the results to our staff in the next few weeks. Loading…

The survey was one that I have adapted from Teacher's Pay Teachers. It had some good questions for students about their general attitudes to Mathematics. I added questions about how game-based learning and how they feel that games help them to learn Math concepts and develop their skills.

The survey has helped to understand how my students feel about Mathematics and particularly using games in the classroom. I found it encouraging that most found that games had a beneficial effect on their learning.

It was encouraging to see that most of their attitudes to Mathematics were positive and that they found it engaging. The other key takeaways from the survey were:

that they feel that there is more than one way to solve problems
they can make mistakes in order to learn
the students need explicit teaching to help them learn.
it bothers them when they get the wrong answer
they like to figure things out on their own
They can learn from others
using hands-on materials helps them learn better.

It was such a valuable survey and feel that this has informed the next part of the year to try some different strategies out for teaching mathematics. I will follow this survey up at the end of the year with a reflection about how they have gone with Mathematics throughout this year to see if the results have improved or have remained consistent.

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