ABSTRACT
Student effort is often affected by students’ perceptions of relevancy of the class and/or course curriculum and whether or not the course material “connects” to their own interests. Some students are totally unaware of the fact that certain behaviors signal negative attitudes or signs of disengagement. Students’ view on the relevancy and value of course material, the assignments, is impacted by their ability to make connections to the reader and the course content. Activating prior knowledge can be as simple as asking students to think about what they already know about a topic or specific problem and how it might be related to new information. Although professors may be concerned that incorporating content revisions to include culturally relevant material would be a very time-consuming and difficult task, Fleming noted that the facilitating effects of culturally relevant mathematics materials appear promising. Student engagement is related to learning, and learning that happens in courses is related to student retention, persistence, and success.
