The effectiveness of taste as a catalyst for learning in primary school

This article presents the results of a survey study conducted among 409 students (2nd to 7th grade), who all participated in mathematics and language lessons based on a teaching material titled Subjects With Taste (SWT). The hypothesis behind developing the teaching material is that taste can be regarded as a fundamental sense that supports individual meaning making and learning processes. Hence, taste can be viewed as a catalyst for learning in a broad variety of schools subjects when incorporated appropriately. The purpose of this study is to investigate this hypothesis and to examine the effectiveness of SWT courses in primary school mathematics and language teaching. Cluster analysis is used to analyze the survey data and identify differences between groups of respondents. Overall, the results indicate that incorporating elements of taste into mathematics and language teaching can have positive effects on most students’ self-assessed learning outcome and learning prerequisites such as a high level of engagement and happiness and a low level of boredom. The group of students that is most challenged in relation to the randomly selected lessons is also the group of students that responds most positively to the SWT teaching. However, a quarter of the students who perform well in the randomly selected lessons respond negatively to the SWT teaching, especially compared to some of the other groups.