Students’ Attitudes in a Mathematical Problem-Solving Competition

The mathematical competitions SUB12 and SUB14 are web-based inclusive competitions where multiple affective dimensions come to the fore in relation to mathematics and problem solving. The moderate mathematical challenges proposed to participants, independent of the official curriculum and intended to be mathematically rich problems, allow young students to find their own strategies and approaches and incite them to come up with ways of expressing their thinking. As part of our research focusing on the competitions SUB12 and SUB14, one goal is to obtain an outline of students’ attitudes in the context of their participation. For this, we adopted a three-dimensional model that addresses students’ views, students’ emotional dispositions, and students’ perception of their competence, to study the participants’ attitudes towards mathematical problem solving and mathematics. In this chapter, we present and analyse data from a questionnaire, which are complemented by the voice of the participants themselves, collected through interviews and from a pool of students’ messages arising from their online participation. Our results indicate that the three affective dimensions are closely interconnected. The global positive attitude towards the participation in the competition reveals emotional dispositions such as fun and enjoyment in solving problems, beliefs such as the view that they become more confident and learn more, and perceived self-competence, when they realize that they are capable of success with different levels of performance and knowledge. The mathematical competitions SUB12 and SUB14 provide fulfilling experiences to the young participants (in each of the three dimensions of the model adopted), which are linked to the will to solve and express mathematical problems, to a favourable view about mathematics, and to a perception of self-improvement.