Personal relevance and interest: exploring the relationships among three types of perceived personal relevance and middle school students' interest in a math lesson

John Dewey proposed genuine interest as the alignment of the individual's sense of self with a particular concept or object, thereby leading to self-initiated engagement. Self-related information processing has also been pointed out in recent years to be an important component in interest development. However, what role self-relevance plays in students' interest has less often been explored in real classroom settings. The current study examined the role of students' three types of personal relevance (i.e., personal association, personal usefulness, relevance as identification ) to the knowledge/skills taught in a math lesson in their interest in the lesson. Among 435 first-year Chinese middle school students, the longitudinal SEM demonstrated that students' three types of perceived personal relevance to the knowledge/skills taught in a math lesson positively predicted their interest with large effect sizes. Personal usefulness exhibited the largest predictive effects on students' interest in the current context. Implications are discussed in the end. Our study demonstrated that middle school students' three types of perceived personal relevance (i.e., personal association, personal usefulness, relevance as identification ) to the knowledge/skills taught in a math lesson play an essential role in students' interest in the math lesson. The findings offer a way to understand middle school students' interest in a math lesson through the lens of three types of personal relevance. Educators may consider supporting different types of personal relevance when designing learning content and activities to elicit middle school students' interest in a math lesson. • The role of personal relevance in interest development was studied empirically. • The three types of personal relevance predicted class interest with large effect sizes. • Personal usefulness exhibited the most effect on class interest in the current context. • The three types of personal relevance might be employed to elicit class interest.