What matters most when improving students' maths skills?

Why do some students keep getting better at mathematics while others make little progress?

• Do maths skills primarily revolve around working memory and how much they can hold in their heads at once?

• Or is it more about their motivation to work on the subject?

Many people may think that mathematics is primarily about cognitive skills.

A new study from NTNU provides a more nuanced view.

Motivation is more important for making progress

“Our findings suggest that intrinsic motivation is more important than working memory for whether a pupil improves in mathematics,” says Astrid Hoås Morin, an associate professor at NTNU’s Department of Education and Lifelong Learning.

She and her colleagues have looked at whether pupils’ motivation or working memory matters most for being able to improve in mathematics over time.

The researchers used data from the long-standing Trondheim Early Secure Study (TESS) project. In the study, they used information from participants who were between 8 and 16 years old.

The researchers also used new analytical methods that make it possible to distinguish stable differences between students from changes occurring within individual students.

This allowed them to examine not only who does best in mathss, but also what factors appear to be related to further development.

The mental notebook

Working memory is the mental notebook we use when we need to keep several things in our heads at the same time.

In mathematics, for example, this might involve remembering numbers, rules, and intermediate calculations while solving a problem.

Working memory therefore also plays a significant role in how students perform in maths. Those who perform exceptionally well often have good working memory. But working memory is not that easy to modify.

“Working memory is more about stable differences between pupils than about what drives further development,” says Morin.

Pupils who currently have good working memory often continue to have relatively good working memory later in life.

The right motivation makes a big difference

“A more promising way to help pupils when the goal is to improve their
mathematics skills seems to be to create interest, mastery, and engagement than to
try to train their working memory,” says Morin.

This is because motivation is easier to influence.

And there may be considerable potential for improvement here. In other words, it is possible to improve in mathematics even if your working memory is not particularly strong.

Intrinsic motivation means that the pupil works at maths because they experience the subject as interesting, fun or meaningful – not just to get good grades, praise, or to avoid being scolded.

Self-reinforcing motivation

This can become a self-reinforcing process. Higher intrinsic motivation was associated with better maths performance two years later.

At the same time, the researchers observed that pupils who did better in maths showed higher intrinsic motivation in the next round of testing.

“We found that intrinsic motivation and maths performance seem to reinforce each other over time. Motivation can help pupils do better in maths, and mastering math can in turn provide more motivation,” says Morin.

And it is probably beneficial to start making mathematics more interesting for students at an early age.

“Motivation is not just something that occurs after you become good at maths, but it can also be part of the path to getting there. It's therefore particularly important to give pupils math experiences that arouse their interest, mastery and engagement,” she says.

Reference:

Morin et al. Do better working memory and higher intrinsic motivation predict greater math achievement? Disaggregating within-person and between-person effects in a birth cohort followed from age 8 to 16, Contemporary Educational Psychology, 2026. DOI: 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2026.102467

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Read the Norwegian version of this article on forskning.no

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