Abstract
<p style="text-align:justify">The research investigated the effect of socioeconomic status, gender, perceived parental influences, teacher affective support, classroom instruction and previous achievement on students’ attitude towards mathematics. The comparison of these effects was also done between urban and rural school students. This research employed a cross-sectional quantitative design based on a structural equation modelling approach. The sample consisted of 808 students from ten secondary schools in Sabah, three of which were urban and seven were rural schools. Findings showed positive relationships exist between perceived parental influences (r = .231), teacher affective support (r = .242), classroom instruction (r = .439), and previous achievement (r = .284) with students’ attitude towards mathematics. The multigroup analysis for urban and rural students showed similar results as the whole student group. However, for urban students, classroom instruction (r = 0.352) and previous achievement (r = -0.363) had the greatest impact on attitude towards mathematics. For rural students, the highest impact on attitude towards mathematics was from classroom instruction (r = 0.452) and teacher affective support (r = 0.246). The least impact for both groups was perceived parental influence. This study implied that factors affected students’ attitude towards mathematics in rural and urban secondary students are different</p>
Highlights
Positive attitude, beliefs and values are considered as important besides strong conceptual knowledge and mathematical knowledge to ensure one’s ability to thrive in a demanding globalized world (Tarmizi & Tarmizi, 2010). Kundu and Ghose (2016) stated that mathematics is critical for human civilization and development
This study concludes that socio-economic status (SES) and gender were not significantly related to attitude towards mathematics (ATM) while perceived parental influences (PPI), teacher affective support (TAS), Classroom instruction (CI) and previous achievement (PA) were significantly related to ATM
The comparison of urban and rural students indicated that CI and TAS were strongly related to ATM
Summary
Beliefs and values are considered as important besides strong conceptual knowledge and mathematical knowledge to ensure one’s ability to thrive in a demanding globalized world (Tarmizi & Tarmizi, 2010). Kundu and Ghose (2016) stated that mathematics is critical for human civilization and development. Kundu and Ghose (2016) stated that mathematics is critical for human civilization and development. Mathematics is a subject in the school curriculum from primary to secondary levels in most countries including Malaysia. Students’ aptitude and attributes have impact on their achievement and enjoyment of learning mathematics (Mazana et al, 2019). Abdul Gafoor and Kurukkan (2015) stated that students tend to dislike mathematics more than other subjects due to aversive teaching style, difficulty in following the instruction, understanding the subject and remembering the equations in solving problems. Past findings showed that attitude towards mathematics is significantly related to achievement in the subject (Lipnevich et al, 2011; Moenikia & Zahed-Babelan, 2010; Mathai, 2014; Singh & Imam, 2013; Spencer, 2012).
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