Original scientific paper
Is Math Something Scary? Attitudes and Beliefs toward Math and Math Anxiety in Secondary School Students
Lidija ARAMBAŠIĆ
Vesna VLAHOVIĆ-ŠTETIĆ
Ana SEVERINAC
Abstract
In the study the authors investigated what general attitudes secondary
school students have toward mathematics, whether they
see it as a male domain, whether they think that math abilities
are inborn and whether they experience math anxiety. The participants
in the study were students from all four classes of two
language oriented and one science-oriented secondary school
(N=510). Two scales were used in the study: Scale for measuring
attitudes and beliefs toward math and Scale for measuring math
anxiety. Looking at the sample as a whole, results show that
participants have neutral attitudes toward mathematics, that they
mostly do not believe that math abilities are inborn and that they
do not agree that math is more a male than female domain. Results
show that science-oriented students, in comparison to language-
oriented ones, have somewhat more positive attitudes toward
math and that they believe less that math abilities are inborn.
In respect to the belief that math is more a male domain,
results show that students as a whole do not agree with this belief.
Such disagreement is more pronounced in girls and science-
-oriented students than in boys and language-oriented students.
In the whole sample, math anxiety is rather low in intensity, and it
is somewhat stronger in language-oriented students and girls. There were no significant interaction effects between educational
orientation and gender on any variable. The obtained results
were commented in regard to students' educational orientation
and different gender role socialization process.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
18096
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2005.
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