Self Efficacy Mathematics Anxiety And Mathematics Performance Pdf

Elsevier

International Journal of Educational Research

Abstract

This study investigates the mediating roles of self-efficacy and mathematics anxiety on the effects of mathematics interest on mathematics achievement. A total of 158161 eighth grade students from 4 province of China participated in the large-scale survey. The findings reveal that (1) mathematics interest had a direct and positive effect on students' mathematics achievement; (2) the positive relationship between mathematics interest and mathematics achievement was partially mediated by self-efficacy; (3) self-efficacy and then mathematics anxiety serially mediated the relationship between mathematics interest and mathematics achievement, but the effect of self-efficacy on mathematics anxiety was relatively smaller. Implications for mathematics education and suggestions for future study are discussed.

Introduction

Interest has been manifested as a significant factor in student's cognitive development and learning (Dewey, 1913; Hidi, 1990; Hidi, Renninger, & Krapp, 1992; Krapp & Prenzel, 2011; Rotgans & Schmidt, 2017). As a psychological state, it increases student's attention, cognitive functioning, persistence, as well as affective involvement (Ainley, Hidi, & Berndorff, 2002; Hidi, 2000). Students usually feel their learning activities to be relatively effortless when their interest is high. Individual interest is content-specific, thus, many researchers used it to explain and predict student's academic achievement in specific subjects (Ainley, 2017; Krapp & Prenzel, 2011; Krapp, Hidi, & Renninger, 1992; Krapp, 2002; Schiefele, Krapp, & Winteler, 1992; Singh, Granville, & Dika, 2002). For mathematics subject, although there are some contradictory findings, especially at the secondary level (e.g., Köller, Baumert, & Schnabel, 2001; Köller, 1998), the majority of researches seem to justify the positive relationship between mathematics interest and achievement (Heinze, Reiss, & Franziska, 2005; Schiefele et al., 1992; Simpkins, Davis-Kean, & Eccles, 2006). However, the specific relationship between mathematics interest and student's academic performance is still not well studied (Fisher, Dobbs-Oates, Doctoroff, & Arnold, 2012; Singh et al., 2002).

Previous researches also reveal that students with higher interests usually tend to have relatively high self-efficacy (Bandura & Schunk, 1981; Eccles & Wigfield, 1995; Harter, 1982), and self-efficacy also has positive relationship with mathematics performance (e.g., Hoffman & Schraw, 2009; Hoffman & Spatariu, 2008; Multon, Brown, & Lent, 1991; Pietsch, Walker, & Chapman, 2003). Additionally, Lent, Lopez, and Bieschke (1991) found that after controlling for self-efficacy, ability did not contribute significant incremental variance to the prediction of mathematics interest. That is to say, self-efficacy is an important factor that influence the relationship between mathematics achievement and interest. In addition, Bandura (1977, 1986, 1991, 1997) argued that the learner with high level of self-efficacy could better regulate his learning activities, and further reduce anxiety. According to his social learning theory, mathematics anxiety could be viewed as a result of low level of mathematics self-efficacy. Therefore, mathematics anxiety should be relevant to mathematics self-efficacy (Hackett & Betz, 1989). Mathematics anxiety, however, has been demonstrated to be negatively correlated with mathematics performance by various studies (Ma, 1999; Namkung, Peng, & Lin, 2019; Schwarzer, Seipp, & Schwarzer, 1989). In other words, it is assumed that mathematics interest may also be relate to self-efficacy, which in turn is associated with mathematics anxiety and mathematics achievement.

However, few studies have investigated the relationship among mathematics interest, self-efficacy, mathematics anxiety and student's academic achievement within a mediation model. Moreover, the prior studies involved with the relationships among some of these elements have been mostly conducted under a western context, while the number of those related researches performed in Eastern culture is very limited. However, the cultural relevance of the theorizing and empirical data has yet to be demonstrated in the East. Thus, in this study, we will clarify the theoretical relationship and provide empirical evidence among mathematics interest, self-efficacy, mathematics anxiety and student's mathematics achievement.

Section snippets

Mathematics interest and mathematics achievement

Student's academic interest is an important factor in his cognitive development and learning (Hidi, 1990; Hidi et al., 1992). Mathematics interest has been justified to be correlated with mathematics achievement (Kim, Jiang, & Song, 2015; Schiefele et al., 1992). Some studies show that mathematics interest could be a predictor of student's later academic achievement (Schiefele & Csikszentmihalyi, 1995; Singh et al., 2002; Viljaranta, Lerkkanen, Poikkeus, Aunola, & Nurmi, 2009). Mathematics

Participants

In the present study, the data we analyzed was from a large-scale investigation in China entitled 'Regional Education Assessment Project (REAP)'. A total of 158161 Chinese eighth graders from 1097 schools were selected from 145 districts and counties of 4 province in the north, south, east and middle of China with two-stage unequal probability sampling. At the first stage, the schools were sorted and stratified by the nature of the school and the school system of districts and counties of each

Preliminary analyses

To validate the construct of the questionnaire, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted on the 3 interrelated scales (mathematics interest, self-efficacy, mathematics anxiety). The results of three-factor structure offered a good fit for the data with χ ² = 53484.819, df = 116; p < .001; CFI = .896; TLI = .879; RMSEA = .054; SRMR = .034. All factor loadings of the 3 scales were above .60.

Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics and correlations among all the studied variables. Results

Discussion

The present study contributes to the literature by validating a theoretical model to confirm the relationship between mathematics interest and mathematical achievement. The main findings of this study are: (1) mathematics interest, self-efficacy, and mathematics achievement were significantly positively correlated with each other, while they were all significantly negatively correlated with mathematics anxiety; (2) self-efficacy played a prominent role in mediating the mathematics interest and

Limitations and suggestions

In this study, one limitation lies on that we didn't control for SES, which was considered to be an important factor that influence students' academic achievements (Schiefele et al., 1992; Singh et al., 2002). Secondly, the large sample size we used may meet the needs of the sample diversity, however, it raises another issue that the self-reported data obtained efficiently from students could exist response bias, thus the revealed relationships may be potentially inflated to some extent. Other

Conclusion

To sum up, using data of a large-scale assessment on Chinese eighth grade students, we examined the relationships among mathematics interest, self-efficacy, mathematics anxiety and mathematics achievement. This study is one of the first that has examined the association among the four variables with serial mediation model. Specifically, (1) the current study contributes by testing the mediating roles of self-efficacy and mathematics anxiety on the effects of mathematics interest on mathematics

Acknowledgement

The data of this research are from Regional Education Monitoring Project of Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment towards Basic Education Quality. The first author (CSC NO. 201906040157) also gratefully acknowledge financial support from China Scholarship Council.

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