Framing the 5% Problem: Teachers' Perspectives on Persistence in Educational Technology

2026-06-20

AI Summary

This study addresses the persistently low student engagement—commonly referred to as the “5% problem”—in adaptive K-12 mathematics platforms by reframing it as a context-sensitive pedagogical challenge. Emphasizing the need to integrate cognitive and contextual evidence, the research focuses on diagnosing students’ “silent disengagement.” Through participatory design workshops with twelve U.S. middle school mathematics teachers using i-Ready Math, the authors employed qualitative methods—including open-ended questioning, card sorting, and collective voting—to identify four key dimensions influencing student persistence: motivation and identity, cognitive barriers, resilience in the face of challenge, and contextual obstacles. The findings provide both a theoretical foundation and a practical framework for designing instructional tools that empower teachers to promptly recognize and respond to signs of student disengagement.

Abstract

Adaptive K-12 mathematics platforms often show low sustained student use, a pattern termed the 5% problem. Although prior work has developed analytics and interventions to identify disengagement, less is known about how teachers make sense of persistence challenges in individualized learning classrooms. This study reports on a 90-minute participatory design workshop with 12 U.S. middle school mathematics teachers who use i-Ready Math weekly. Teachers generated needs through open-ended prompts, card sorting, and collective voting. Thematic analysis identified four recurring dimensions of low persistence spanning motivation and buy-in, cognitive roadblocks, resilience under challenge, and contextual barriers. Teachers emphasized the need to identify where students become stuck and recognize silent disengagement, prioritizing support for diagnosis and timely instructional response over aggregate usage metrics. These findings reframe the 5% problem as a situated instructional challenge and suggest a need for teacher-facing systems that support interpretation of student persistence through both cognitive and contextual evidence.

Problem

• 5% problem
• educational technology
• student persistence
• teacher perspectives
• adaptive learning

Innovation

• 5% problem
• teacher perspectives
• student persistence
• participatory design
• educational technology