Emotions and motivation in mathematics education: theoretical considerations and empirical contributions

Emotions and motivation are important prereq-uisites, mediators, and outcomes of learning and achieve-ment. In this article, we first review major theoretical approaches and empirical findings in research on students\u27 emotions and motivation in mathematics, including a dis-cussion of how classroom instruction can support emo-tions and motivation. Based on this review, we encourage researchers from mathematics education and other dis-ciplines of educational research to combine their efforts. Second, we provide an overview of the contributions in this special issue, most of which reflect such a combination of efforts by considering perspectives from both mathematics education and other fields of educational research. Finally, we consider the neglect of intervention studies and outline directions for future research. We identify intervention studies that target emotions and motivation as one promis-ing but so far underrepresented line of research in mathe-matics education and review results from existing interven-tion studies. For future research, we suggest that researchers should implement fine-grained concepts, assessment instru-ments, theoretical hypotheses, and methods of analysis tai-lored to the specific features of the mathematical domain to adequately investigate students\u27 emotions and motivation in this domain

Empirical research on teaching and learning of mathematical modelling: a survey on the current state-of-the-art

The teaching and learning of mathematical modelling is an important research field all over the world. In this paper we present a survey of the state-of-the-art on empirical studies in this field. We analyse the development of studies focusing on cognitive aspects of the promotion of modelling, i.e. the promotion of modelling abilities resp. skills, or in newer terminology, modelling competencies. Furthermore, we provide a literature search on the role of empirical research in important mathematics education journals and point out that this topic is only seldom treated in these journals. In addition, Proceedings of the conference series on the teaching and learning of mathematical modelling and applications were analysed in order to identify the role of empirical research in this important series and the kind of topics which are examined. The literature research points out the dominance of case study approaches and cognitively oriented studies compared to studies which used quantitative research methods or focused on affect-related issues. Finally, the papers in this special issue are described and developments and future prospects are identified