Developing and Evaluating a Real-World Calculus Pedagogy for Sustainable Business Management Students

Abstract

This study developed and evaluated a real-world calculus pedagogy for Sustainable Business Management students. The purpose was to determine whether contextualized calculus instruction, built around sustainable business problems such as marginal cost, revenue optimization, carbon-cost trade-offs, inventory control and break-even analysis, improves students' conceptual understanding, engagement and perceived ability to apply calculus in sustainability-oriented managerial decisions. A quasi-experimental mixed-methods design was adopted. The population comprised 320 undergraduate Business Management students enrolled in a business mathematics course at a higher learning institution. From this population, 180 students were selected through stratified random sampling and assigned to a control group (n = 90) and an experimental group (n = 90). Quantitative data were collected through a calculus achievement test, a learning engagement scale, a perceived business applicability scale and a sustainability decision-making confidence scale. Qualitative data were collected through short reflective responses from 24 purposively selected students in the experimental group. The intervention lasted eight teaching weeks. The results showed that the experimental group improved from a pre-test mean of 49.76 to a post-test mean of 70.21, while the control group improved from 47.46 to 55.96. The difference in learning gain was statistically significant, with a large effect size. The experimental group also reported higher engagement, perceived applicability and sustainability decision-making confidence. The study concludes that a real-world calculus pedagogy can make calculus more meaningful for business students by connecting abstract mathematical ideas to practical sustainability decisions. It recommends that business mathematics courses should be redesigned around authentic managerial cases, technology-supported modelling and reflective decision-making tasks.