Secondary School Students' (11-14 Years) Effective Input Characteristics for Mathematics, Self-Regulation Skills and Self-Esteem.

Abstract

Based on Confucius’ saying “ A word may change your mind, an emotion may change your life and a person may change you ”, our emotions affect our learning if we take life as a process of learning. Some of our learning on which we are successful and unsuccessful are student characteristics. Effective properties are one of the characteristics of students. As Wang (2006) states, in terms of mathematics, effective factors related to mathematics lesson are effective on the importance given to mathematics and on the withdrawal from mathematics. Students strive to succeed if they have positive effective input characteristics. However, if they have negative effective characteristics, they may give up not being able to resist the challenges they face. The striving students determine the learning environment and conditions and can make arrangements. This result obtained by the students may sometimes turn out as they wanted, or on the contrary as an undesirable situation. In this case, self-esteem will come into play. Self-esteem is a concept related to the self-appreciation, ability to reveal their skills and knowledge, and success is important in the formation and development of self-esteem (Kohut, 1971). Hence, this study analyzes the effective input characteristics, self-regulation skills and self-esteem of secondary school students together. Among the screening models, general screening model was used in this study. The participants of the study consisted of 361 secondary school students (11-14 years) who study in the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grades of secondary schools in a city of Turkey in the spring term of 2017-2018 academic year. In the collection of data “Effective Input Characteristics for Math Scale” developed by Caliskan and Serce (2016), “Perceived Self-Regulation Scale” developed by Arslan and Gelisli (2015), “Self-esteem Scale” developed by Rosenberg (1965) and adapted to Turkish by Cuhadaroglu (1985) were used. Students’ effective input characteristics towards mathematics, perceived self-regulation skills and self-esteem were evaluated according to gender, grade level, mathematics course achievement score, and parental attitude. It was determined that secondary school students’ effective input characteristics for Math and self-regulation skills were higher than average; and self-esteem was average. Based on the findings of the research, suggestions were presented about effective input characteristics, self-regulation skills, and self-esteem for secondary school students. Article visualizations: