Triangular law of students’ Mathematics Interest in Ghana: A Model with motivation and perception as predictor

Samuel Asiedu-Addo,Yarhands Dissou Arthur,Charles K Assuah

doi:10.29333/iejme/630

Samuel Asiedu-Addo, Yarhands Dissou Arthur + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/630

Copy DOI

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to verify by means of structural equation modelling (SEM) how students’ interest in mathematics (SIM) is affected by students’ perception and students’ motivation to learn mathematics. The study further investigated the effect of students’ perception (SP) on students’ motivation (SM) to learn mathematics. The study adopted a simple random sampling technique to administer 150 questionnaires to 10 public Senior High Schools in Ghana. In all, a total number of 1,500 students were given the questionnaire to indicate their responses. However, 1,263 questionnaires were properly administered, representing 84.3% response rate. The constructs reliability for SIM, SP, and SM were 0.71, 0.82, and 0.68 respectively. The further explored how the goodness-of-fit influences the measurement model, structural model and the overall model. The findings indicated that when Ghanaian high school students’ have good perception about mathematics and have the motivation to learn mathematics, their interest in mathematics would improve significantly.

Highlights

The perception of students about Mathematics and their students’ motivation to learn Mathematics is of great importance to students’ interest in mathematics (Arthur, Asiedu-Addo, & Assuah, 2017; Martin, 2006; Meece, Wigfield, & Eccles, 1990)
The results from the study revealed that students motivation and students’ perception significantly predicts students’ interest in mathematics and explains 22.2% of variance in students’ interest in mathematics
The study concluded that student interest in mathematics could be improved if students’ motivation for studying mathematics and the perception about mathematics improves

Summary

Introduction

The perception of students about Mathematics and their students’ motivation to learn Mathematics is of great importance to students’ interest in mathematics (Arthur, Asiedu-Addo, & Assuah, 2017; Martin, 2006; Meece, Wigfield, & Eccles, 1990). Students’ interest in mathematics is key in their.

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion