The changes in attitudes of 15-year-old Australian students towards reading, mathematics and science and their impact on student performance

Abstract

This paper investigates changes in 15-year-old Australian students’ attitudes towards reading mathematics, and science, as well as their relationships with students’ performance in these respective domains over the period of 2000–2018. multigroup confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the measurement invariance of the construct of attitudes over the cycles of the Programme for International Student Achievement. In addition, structural equation modelling was used to explore mediating effects of attitudes on performance in the three domains. The results indicated that there were significant declines in student performance for all three domains. The levels of enjoyment of the subject domains were relatively low for reading and mathematics but relatively high for science. There were upward trends in the levels of enjoyment of mathematics and science over time, while levels of enjoyment of reading did not change significantly. Levels of instrumental motivation were relatively high and had slight upward trends for both mathematics and science. There were positive and significant relationships between attitudes and student performances.