A study of student attitudes towards algebra and its impact on Mathematic achievement / Abdul Sattar Gasim

Abstract:
This is a quantitative correlational study which has explored the algebra attitudes of eight grade students and the contribution of the attitude components in students' final mathematics achievement. The study population included students from two main schools of Male' who have been selected using stratifies random sampling. One component of Fennema-Sharman Mathematics Attitudes Scale and three components of Attitude towards Mathematics Inventory (ATMI) by Tapia and Marsh were used to survey the algebra attitudes of 39 boys and 45 girls in grades eight.
Survey responses were used to compile descriptive and inferential statistics. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) with alpha level of 0.05 was used to analyze the data for descriptive statistics, correlation, contribution and for mean difference. Independent sample t-test was used to find the difference, spearman's rho was used to calculate the correlation and multiple regression analysis was used to find the contribution.
The descriptive result shows that the learners have a neutral attitude for the components of the attitude towards algebra except for the teacher expectation component. The teacher expectation has nearly a positive attitude towards algebra learning. The results also show that there was a moderate relationship between total attitude scores and the achievement. The multiple regressions show that the confidence component contributed 19.5% to the final achievement of the students. Moreover, the result indicates that there were no any significant differences between boys and girls in their attitude towards algebra expect for enjoyment component.