How Do Students Negotiate their Affect toward Mathematical Problem-Solving and How Do they Assign Meaning to Problems and Problem-Solving? A Qualitative Meta-Synthesis.

Abstract

Qualitative studies have enriched the mathematics education field over the past 40 years across various topics. In spite of the fact that the number of these studies is increasing and the quality of qualitative research studies in mathematics education is changing, little is still known about how this qualitative research findings would contribute to our understanding of a particular topic within the field. Through the process of qualitative research meta-synthesis, our knowledge base can be widened to offer better and deeper understanding of attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors relevant to mathematics teaching and learning. This study is a qualitative research meta-synthesis that aims at synthesizing, analyzing, and integrating the findings of a collective body of qualitative research to understand the way students negotiate their affective field toward problem-solving, and the way students assign personal meanings to problems and to problem-solving. This study utilizes theory-generating approaches to qualitative meta-synthesis which is based on the grounded formal theory to analyze data extracted from twenty-one selected relevant qualitative studies. The grounded theory would provide a comprehensive framework that enables us to understand and explain how students negotiate their affective relationship with problem-solving and the way they assign meaning to it by coding, categorizing, constant comparison, coming up with a theme, and generating a well-founded theory.