Real-World Applications in Math Class

Calls to connect school mathematics to applications in the real-world are ubiquitous. I examine the experience of senior high school students as they encounter a student-centred real-world application task applying logarithms and exponential functions in a murder mystery context. I observed students through the task, analyzed their written solutions, and administered a follow-up questionnaire. Four case studies illustrate the range and nuanced experiences of students completing the real-world task. During the real-world task students experienced prolonged motivation, they made sense of abstract mathematics through the context of the task, and they benefited from group interactions. This empirical study provides support for the claimed benefits from the literature for the inclusion of real-world applications in the teaching and learning of secondary mathematics.