The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of teaching strategies that engage college students who experienced childhood difficulties in learning mathematics in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in terms of the nature of the classroom learning environment and students' satisfaction. In addition, I investigated how the use of personally-relevant and concrete activities changed the learning environment in ways that were perceived to be beneficial by adults who had experienced failure.A sample of 84 students from eight classes in the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) were...