While the mathematics education community has placed a great deal of emphasis on the need to connect mathematics in the classroom to the real world, there is evidence that in practice this happens infrequently. Research shows that teachers often:
regard issues around behaviour and learners’ poor reading skills as obstacles to discovery learning
have difficulties in recognising the mathematics that arises in the workplace, and
only introduce real world connections in a cursory way rather than as an integral part of the curriculum materials and activities.
However, while there is a consensus in the findings of researchers investigating this topic, the actual volume of research is rather sparse.
The author of this study conducted a survey of 62 secondary mathematics teachers to find out about whether and how they used real-world connections in mathematics lessons. The author then explored the findings from these interviews by observing teachers making real-world connections in the classroom and comparing the outcomes from the survey with the observations.
