Chapter 10: Teaching Modelling Problems and Its Effects on Students’ Engagement and Attitude Toward Mathematics

In this chapter, the engagement of 244 students is measured across three different types of mathematical problems (modelling problems, word problems, and mathematical exercises). We also investigate the potential of teaching modelling problems in changing students’ attitude towards mathematics. This research was conducted with a pre-test, followed by an educational intervention and a post-test. During the educational intervention, two groups of students with different instructional formats attended six sessions of modelling problem solving. The results of this study show that, although, there existed no significant difference in engagement existed between the three types of mathematical problems in the pre-test data, both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the post-test data showed that students generally experienced more engagement on word problems. Results also show that teaching modelling problems improved students’ attitudes towards mathematics in both groups.