Abstract Even when students’ interest is triggered by some feature of the mathematics activity with which they are working, it can be a challenge for educators to support them to sustain their interest—to begin asking their own questions about mathematics, voluntarily exploring its structure, patterns, and relations. In the present study, we examined whether student groups that persevere to navigate stuckness simply are more interested in mathematics, or if resources such as opportunities to collaborate, group-worthy problems, and an online context that required turn-taking, reflection, and discussion, supported students to sustain interest and work with stuckness. We focused on instances in which 3-5-person groups in a class of seventh-grade students (15 male, 13 female; 78.6% Hispanic) worked with stuckness during an open-ended mathematics activity in the Virtual Math Teams (VMT) environment. Data sources included continuous records of group problem-solving activity using a chat discussion and a dynamic workspace. Additional data sources included assessments of achievement, interest, level of collaboration, and use of executive functions. Group-level descriptive analyses showed that during instances of stuckness, all student groups were on task and talking about the activity’s mathematics content. Findings suggest that student groups who sustained mathematics interest were not simply more interested in mathematics. Rather, the use of resources such as dynamic tools and the opportunity to think with each other on their own mathematical questions triggered and sustained the situational interest of all students. Even students with less prior interest in mathematics were positioned to articulate new mathematical understanding.
Renninger et al. (2026) studied this question.