General description on research questions

One of the objectives in the research project Leadership and Learning for the Development of Teachers' Professional Digital Competence (LeadDig)is to help teachers develop their professional digital and assessment competence, thus influencing the studentsʼ learning environment and learning using digital technology.

In the LeadDig project, CHAT (Engeström, 2001) is used to develop a common shared object regarding using digital tools in all subjects, particularly mathematics. The shared object for the teachers at the first school is: How can we use digital tools to create variation and student-active learning? The teachers at the second school have not decided on their shared object yet.

Teachers participating in the LeadDig project say students are more motivated in learning processes where they are allowed to use digital tools. The purpose of this study is to investigate if this is true and further explore what students think about digital tools in their learning processes. Knowledge about this area can contribute to a more conscious use of digital tools in schools.

The research question of this study is: How do digital tools motivate students in Norwegian lower secondary schools to learn mathematics?

Theoretical framework

Students’ motivation is not constant. Motivation is a situational condition affected by the students' values, experiences, expectations, and needs (Wæge & Nosrati, 2018). Students can be intrinsically or extrinsically motivated. Intrinsically motivated students work with their tasks because they like to and feel internal satisfaction. Extrinsically motivated students work with the learning activities to get good grades or approval from others (Ryan & Deci, 2000). To understand students' motivation, we need to know their goals; why they work with tasks and learning activities. Theories of goal orientation distinguish between learning goals and performance goals. Students with learning goal orientation are eager to learn, master, and understand the subject content. Students with performance goal orientation, want to get good grades and appear as clever or smart (Stipek, 2002). Nicholls et al. (1990) argue that some students seem to be motivated to avoid doing schoolwork. They refer to this as work-avoidance goals.

Learning goal-oriented students see success as improvement, progress, mastery, and creativity. They show effort and persistence, and they find intrinsic and personal meaning in the activity; they want to learn and master the content. Performance goal-oriented students see success as high grades, winning, and high performance compared to others. They want to avoid failure and succeed with low effort, and they do the tasks to demonstrate their abilities (Stipek, 2002).

When we use the term digital tools, we refer to both educational resources and learning resources. Educational resources were originally developed with the Norwegian curriculum in mind and learning resources were produced for other purposes but used in mathematics education by teachers or students (Gilje et at., 2016).  

The participants in this study are students from two lower secondary schools in the same municipality in Norway. The first school has about 50 students from grades 8 to 10, and the second has about 300 students. The first school is in a rural district of the municipality and the second one is situated in the centre. The participants in this study had given their consent to participate (NESH, 2021), and they were assured anonymity and confidentiality. Data collection and analysis To gain insight into how students’ reason about using digital tools in mathematics education we conducted a web-based questionnaire in which students answered open-ended and closed-ended questions about their thoughts and experiences with digital tools. The answers to these questions were structured in tables for each question. In some of the closed-ended questions the students were asked to respond to statements using a four-point Likert scale (Albaum, 1997). In the development of the Likert scale, equal distances between the different scale points are recommended, regardless of the analysis method intended to be used (Cohen et al., 2018). We chose the options “disagree“, “partially disagree“, “partially agree“, and “agree“, which are considered ordinal data since they can be ranked (Stevens, 1946). In the analysis of the ordinal data, we conducted a correlation analysis (Cohen et al., 2018) between the statements 'I learn more when I use a computer in mathematics lessons', and 'I get more motivated when I use a computer in mathematics lessons'. A correlation coefficient explains how many percent of the variation in the independent variable can be explained by the dependent variable (Ringdal, 2018). We used the constant comparative method of analysis (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) and started the open coding process by reading through the answers to the open-ended questions. From this first reading, we developed a preliminary code list, including learning goals, performance goals, and work-avoidance goals, and we were open to what the data could tell us beyond these concepts, thus being abductive in the coding process (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009). During the next step, we all coded the answers individually and agreed in discussion. We constructed tables to get an overview of the students’ answers, these tables helped us explore how students think about using digital tools in mathematics education.

Our preliminary findings regarding the open-ended questions show that almost 55 percent of the students want to use digital tools because the tools make it easier to write, erase, and edit their work, and it is easier to find information needed to complete their work. These types of answers can indicate a performance goal orientation; the students want to succeed with low effort, but it can also indicate a learning goal orientation; they want to learn and master the content (Stipek, 2002). The purpose of the question “What makes you want to work with the content in a school lesson?” was to get insight into the students' goal orientation. About 25 percent of the students seem to be learning goal-oriented. One example of a learning goal-oriented answer is: “I like to work when I succeed in my work”. Approximately 65 percent of the students seem to be performance goal-oriented. One example of a performance goals-oriented answer is: “When the work is graded, I work my ass off”. In the questionnaire, the students were asked to consider the following statements: “I learn more when I use a computer in mathematics lessons”, and “I get more motivated when I use a computer in mathematics lessons”. The results show a strong correlation between the students’ responses to the statements. The correlation coefficient is 0,719. Table 1 shows that many students claim that using digital tools make them learn more and be more motivated. Table 1: Distribution of the students' responses to the statements. Learn more - More Motivated: Agree - Agree 137 (46,6 %) Agree - Disagree 27 (9,2 %) Disagree - Agree 29 (9,9 %) Disagree - Disagree 101 (34,4 %) The results of this study show that the students think that digital tools motivate them and help them learn more, and they express different reasons for the increased motivation.

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