Maths in Museums: Investigating the potential benefits of maths-based museum learning activities to secondary schools, heritage sites and student attitudes towards mathematics

This research project investigated whether taking part in maths-themed visits to museums may help to improve attitudes towards mathematics of participating students, and whether it is in the interests of museums to offer such visits. It was conducted in three strands: interviews with secondary school mathematics teachers who had taken students on maths-themed visits to museums; interviews with museum educators at museums that offer a maths-themed visit for secondary schools; and surveys of secondary school mathematics students which were designed to assess their feelings towards mathematics at various points leading up to and following their participation in a maths-themed trip to a museum.

Evidence was discovered to suggest that experiencing such visits may have an overall positive effect on secondary school students’ attitudes towards mathematics. Specifically, the data collected from the student surveys indicated that attitudes towards mathematics became less positive (or more negative), on average, as the date of the visit draws nearer, but that immediately after the visit attitudes towards mathematics were more positive (or less negative) than at any other point during the research period.

Interviews with the teachers generally supported the idea that a maths-themed trip to a museum may help to improve student attitudes to the subject, and indicated that this was a high priority in terms of their criteria for deeming a visit successful. Interviews with museum educators highlighted assumptions that mathematics teachers placed a higher priority on curriculum-based objectives, but comparing responses from both groups found that there was much greater overlap in what each felt should be a priority for maths-themed visits than the museum educator group generally assumed to be the case.

The findings support the idea that maths-themed visits to museums are of benefit to early secondary-age students of mathematics in terms of improving their attitudes towards the subject; that such trips are worthwhile from the point of view of the schools and teachers; and that there are clear benefits to museums that offer such trips, such as helping to make them more attractive to secondary schools. They also highlighted a communicative disconnect between mathematics teachers and museum educators generally, but which was largely absent where museums had long-standing collaborative relationships with mathematics teachers.