Influence of Affective Variables on Mathematics Performance of First Year Students Research Paper

Introduction

Mathematics is a very important subject because knowledge of this subject acts as a foundation for effective learning different subjects and also to be happy and successful in normal life as knowledge of mathematics especially arithmetic is required in our day to day life. However, mathematics has long been perceived as a difficult subject. This perception is not mine or something that needs support from any research work done in this area, though much work has been done. Mathematics is perceived as a difficult subject by a vast majority is something that is accepted as universal truth. There are many reasons but it is not difficult to appreciate why it is so. Once a child is born he encounters simple sounding words like mama, papa, baba etc. Once he grows he comes to know that he needs to write these words as well and there are some symbols (letters) corresponding to certain sounds. This is generally not so difficult for him/her as this comes in as a natural learning process and is repeated in daily life continuously. Learning of verbal subjects (symbols, combination of symbols, structuring of words and grammar) is, therefore, is not so difficult at least to the level one needs in everyday life because this is something one learns from the very beginning and continuously and also, there is no hard and fast rule for the correctness or otherwise. One can go ahead even if he sounds a particular word in a somewhat different manner or speaks a couple of grammatically incorrect sentences for a very long time by the time he realizes his / her mistakes and corrects the same to a great extent.

However, it is not so with mathematics. Counting is not something that a child is taught, it comes much late and writing the numerals is something that comes still later. Once he starts writing a number he finds that each symbol has a corresponding word in the vocabulary, that is alright but not so easy are the rules to combine the numbers and added that there are many complexities like place value, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and a new one coming by the time the earlier one was learned/memorized. Also, unlike in the verbal domain, where someone was responding to him/her once he/she said mama, papa etc. there is nobody to respond to when he/she goes on telling 10, 20, 25, etc. So the numbers are not as natural to him/her as were words. This is what acts as differentiating factors – where so many variables creep in. The first one is the cognitive ability of the child. Whether her brain was wired to be comfortable with numbers or words or both – nobody knows the answer at that stage but teaching continues in a manner set for everybody. As the teaching process is customized from the very beginning itself causes so many troubles and incorporates so many negatives in the attitude of the child towards the subject, which generally goes on amplifying with every passing day in his / her life and therefore, it is not surprising that there exists a widely held perception that mathematics is a difficult subject. So what one is supposed to take on difficulties and challenges and here come the different attitudinal attributes that determine, how one’s attitude will affect his learning process and what success he can expect for learning a difficult subject like mathematics. In this work the effect of attitudinal variables like confidence, self–esteem, liking/disliking/perception of mathematics etc on the mathematics performance of first-year students is investigated and the same is reported in this paper.

Meaning of attitudes and their impact on student’s academic achievement

The success of a person in the life on a whole or in specific fields depends among the other things on many variables related to different attributes of one’s personality. These attributes can be broadly classified into two classes – ‘aptitude’ and ‘attitude’. There is another important factor, which is the kind of instruction or training one receives during his / her learning process. Human characteristics and school learning was investigated and reported by Bloom (1976). He identified three variables that determine one’s an academic success; these are 1) one’s cognitive entry skills and IQ (50%), 2) the quality of instruction he receives (25%); and 3) his affective characteristics (25%). Cognitive entry skills and IQ depend on one’s grey matter and can be measured by the scores in the entrance test required for his entry into post-secondary studies. The quality of instruction refers to the way teaching is imparted by the teachers, the way the curriculum is designed, the kind of textbooks being followed, the way the teaching style of the teacher is received by the student and supplementary instruction. Affective characteristics refer to a student’s self-confidence, study skills, test-taking skills, locus of control, attitude, socioeconomic status, as well as student engagement in the learning process.

It is widely perceived that ‘aptitude’ is something that is God-gifted or something that depends on what someone has inherited genetically. This depends on the way his or her brain was wired to function according to what was coded in his / her genes. Accordingly someone may be good in Arts and humanities, while others may be good in logic or mathematics and natural sciences. A significant amount of work about brain and genetic sequencing is devoted to understanding and explaining the differential abilities of people in different disciplines of knowledge.

Affective or attitudinal attributes on the other hand are those which belong to the attitude of persons like confidence or lack of it, liking or disliking, perception, study habits etc. These attributes are something that is mostly cultivated and depend mostly on the upbringing of a person. A significant amount of work is devoted to understand and explain the causal effect of attitudinal attributes on the success of a person.

While there may be different opinions on the relative contribution of aptitude and attitudinal variables on the success of an individual; there is no denying that attitudinal variables play a significant role in the overall success of a person in his / her life as a whole or the specific areas. A famous saying – “Slow, but steady wins the race” is reinforces the role that attitudinal variables play in success.

Attitude is a very important concept for the mathematics learning process. It is an attitude that affects everything that one tries to learn or do. It affects even one’s relationship with others and also how open or close is someone when it comes to acquiring or learning a new subject or idea. If the attitude is positive the learning process becomes enjoyable and successes are more probable. It is said that well begun is half done. It should be noted that if the attitude is not positive, then well begun is also not possible. Needless to say that with a negative attitude, one does not like to do something and therefore, success is accordingly less probable. This applies to everything and so to mathematics. One’s attitude toward mathematics affects how well or how often he/she does it, and how much enjoyment he/she derives from it. Many students enrolled in mathematics courses in college have a negative attitude toward mathematics and are suffering from math anxiety or math avoidance’. However, this difficulty is has nothing to do with their ability in mathematics but rather is related to the attitudes that they hold about mathematics. It should be recognized that one can change his / her fear about mathematics with his / her positive attitude and improve his / her mathematical competency (OCCC 2005).

Not much work is reported in the literature investigating the relationship between attitude toward mathematics and achievement in mathematics. Ma and Kishor (1997) have statistically investigated the magnitude of this relationship. They conducted a meta-analysis to synthesize and summarize the findings from several previous studies. The statistical results of these studies were transformed into a common effect size measure by calculating the correlation coefficient. The mathematical achievement was found to be dependent on different variables like – grade, ethnic background, sample selection, sample size, and date of publication. Gender did not show a significant impact on mathematical achievement. Also the other variables like grade and ethnic background did not have any significant impact on mathematical achievement. They have discussed the findings in comparison to previous narrative reviews and meta-analyses, and draw implications for practice and further research.

Therefore, there is no doubt that attitude plays a very critical role in the performance of students in mathematics and hence, it is very useful to understand different attitudinal variables and also how these variables affect the performance in the learning process. Different attitudinal attributes relevant to learning mathematics in first-year students will be briefly discussed in the subsequent sections, with emphasis on the role of these variables in mathematics education.

Confidence in Mathematics and liking and disliking of the subject

What determines whether or not someone can solve a problem? There are many factors that will determine one’s ability to solve a problem like his knowledge, skills, etc. But the most important is his / her confidence in doing the problem. How confidence in one’s ability to solve a problem makes a difference. It works like this – if someone is confidant about solving a problem then he / she takes on the problem from the front and looks at it from a much wider perspective and from the point of view of possible solutions as he knows that he can solve it. However, if someone is not confidant then he / she lands up following the twists and challenges posed by the problem and eventually get trapped in it, this gives a further blow to his confidence in his ability of solving the problem and vicious cycle goes on. This is very relevant in case of mathematical problems, which are designed to test students’ ability to attack it and not to follow it. It is therefore, very important that a student is confidant of his / her ability to solve a mathematical problem to be able to actually solve it. What happens when one is not sure of his ability to solve a problem? In such a situation anxiety is filled in the mind of the student and this anxiety is the sinking or negative feeling that sets in the mind of the student and he becomes uneasy, apprehensive, or fearful. In case of math anxiety one has a feeling of intense frustration or helplessness about his / her capability to be able to learn new mathematical concepts and solve mathematical problems. This state of math can be defined as feelings of tension and anxiety that destructively interfere with the capability of manipulating numbers and the solving mathematical problems in a wide variety of ordinary life and academic situations. This aspect of mathematics learning has been explored by many researchers and some of their worked is briefly discussed below. The most authentic and widely accepted definition of mathematical anxiety comes from the pioneering work of Richardson and Suinn (1972) on developing rating scale for mathematical anxiety reported in Journal of Counseling Psychology and the definition is “mathematical anxiety is the feelings of tension and anxiety that interfere with the manipulation of numbers and the solving of mathematical problems in a wide variety of ordinary life and academic situations”. This concept of mathematical anxiety evinced strong interest of the researchers’ community after this pioneering work of Suinn and Richardson. Another definition of mathematical anxiety was given by Williams (1988) in his work on “answers to questions about mathematics anxiety” published in “School Science and Mathematics”. He proposed a more concise definition of mathematics anxiety as “both an emotional and a cognitive dread of mathematics”. This makes more sense as mathematical anxiety cannot arise simply out of attitudinal traits only. In fact lack of appropriate cognitive ability is bound to create more trouble to a student when he tries to learn mathematics and once he / she faces difficulty, the negative spiral begins in which the poor guy gets trapped.

These definitions portray mathematics anxiety as a form of anxiety which is specific to mathematics education, mathematics instruction and mathematics-related activities. Also this develops as something debilitative in nature that negatively impacts performance in mathematics and hinders subsequent learning of mathematics.

The important and very explicit symptoms of mathematical anxiety are briefly described below.

1. Panic: In case of mathematical anxiety the students gets panicked and feels helpless. It appears to them as if a brick wall has come down and that they will never be able to do better. In fact they feel that this is all that they can do in mathematics and nothing more as if they have reached their limit as far as mathematics is concerned.
2. Paranoia: This is also another very important and serious manifestation of mathematical anxiety. In this state the students feel that everybody in the class knows the answer except him. This sets a different kind of negative feeling. They feel what if the teacher is going to ask them for giving the answer. Then they will be caught as fools in the entire class and will lose their face. To them it appears that they were faking the knowledge of mathematics, while they actually do not know the subject. So they grow reluctant towards attending the mathematics class.
3. Passive: This is not the initial stage of mathematical anxiety, rather this is a grown up stage. By this time considerable amount of anxiety has already set in their minds and this reflects in their attitude. They have accepted it that they do not have a mind capable of learning and doing mathematics and therefore, there is no point in persisting with mathematics. So what will they do is to take no action. This is very serious as far as mathematical learning process is concerned. Once a student is convinced to himself / herself, there is hardly anything a mathematics teacher can do. So this becomes a case of serious psychological counseling.
4. Lack of confidence: This is also a progressive stage of mathematical anxiety. Serious lack of confidence sets in the mind of a student. He begins to distrust his / her intuition and abilities of his / her brains. This manifests in many ways like he / she will rely more on the memorizing power of his / her brain rather than deriving the formulae from the understanding of the basic concepts. They do so even in examinations, what they do is to write down the useful formulae on the answer sheet before they actually receive the question papers. This they do as they fear to forget these formulae once they see the question and the questions put pressure on their brain. This is a self defeating proposition as try to memorize so many formulae puts lot of stress on one’s brain and it starts malfunctioning. It is akin to overstressing one’s brain and can never be anything but harmful to one’s learning process and overall development.

Besides, there are other serious problems with students suffering with mathematical anxiety. Such students begin to feel that their problems are unique, plaguing just them and also that others can not understand their problem and will be of no use so there is no point in sharing their problems with others as they will simply laugh at him and will hardly offer any real help as the same can not be offered. Thus they continue to live with their troubles, suffering the agony which goes on aggravating with time. However, their perception is not true as many students and even grown up people have difficulties in mathematics and the same can be resolved to a reasonably good level by proper counseling and by incorporating suitable modification in the manner in which they are being taught the subject.

Tobias S. (1993) has reported in his work on overcoming math anxiety that math anxiety can cause one to forget and lose one’s self-confidence. This is because students experience lot of discomfort and feelings of anxiety when thinking about mathematical concepts or solving mathematical problems. This situation is best described by the term mathematics anxiety. Contrary to common belief that only kids and small children are prone to mathematics anxiety, he reported that students are prone to mathematics anxiety at all levels of education from primary school to higher education. Not just that if mathematics anxiety sets in one’s personality it persists for life and if not cured by proper counseling, interferes negatively with day to day activities in which numbers and their manipulation or other mathematical activities are involved. It is useful to explore as how it comes. This comes primarily from negative experiences while learning from teachers, tutors, parents etc. or working with classmates or siblings. In many circumstances, it also comes from stress or a personal problem that was prevalent at the same time when he / she was learning a new mathematical concept or numerical manipulation. In this case the student tends to correlate all the difficulty he / she is facing; with mathematics as mathematics is perceived to be a tough subject.

This (math anxiety) is a very common problem and affects more than fifty percent of the students and grown up persons alike. To understand effects of this problem one should try to learn the stories of those suffering with this problem like how disturbed such students / persons become and also how they cope with the same. This problem is widely spread in our society across the class and nation. Students encounter with math anxiety begins at home. At home elders try to incorporate some numerical and mathematical concepts and knowledge to their kids. Many times there is a great mismatch between the way elders are teaching and the way the kid should have been taught. For elders it becomes difficult to realize as how the kid is not able to get a very simple idea / point and for the kid it becomes difficult to comprehend, what is so simple and straightforward to the elder. Though the elder goes on imposing his / her method on the kid and ultimately the child starts to realize that there is some problem with him / her making it difficult to learn a tough subject like mathematics and he / she finally withdraws or discovers some method to keep distance with the subject or the elder. This can be termed as sowing the seed of math anxiety in the brains of students. Even at schools there are wide mismatch between students’ way of learning and teachers’ way of teaching. This causes improper learning by the students and sows the seeds of math anxiety in them. Not just that, many times students find that their teachers themselves are having problem in teaching some of the concepts and chapters. This strengthens their conviction that mathematics is really a very tough subject and that if teachers are finding it difficult then how a student can learn it. Also, if a teacher can not teach a concept comfortably, he can not teach it properly as well and this is bound to contribute to math anxiety in the students.

Tingly (1997) in his work on Math Anxiety: fear of tackling math problems has reported that despite mathematics is being a difficult subject to teach / learn; math anxiety can be taught / learned almost by osmosis. That is it is much easier to learn and teach math anxiety than math itself.

Curtain (1999) in his work on reducing math anxiety in class room, work place and everyday life has confirmed the pressure of timed tests and risk of public embarrassment, which has been recognized as sources of unproductive tension among many students for very long time. Some practices are regular part of the traditional mathematics classroom like imposed authority, public exposure and time deadlines and these practices lead to great anxiety in most of the students. Despite these practices being regular part of the traditional mathematics classroom, they cause lot of anxiety. Therefore, there should be more a cordial and friendly ambience in the mathematics class room, providing more scope for a healthy discussion of new concepts and a continuous evaluation in stead of hard pattered timely examinations.

It has been reported by many studies that math anxiety is most often incorporated in school situations and maintained as well. The person cannot get rid of math anxiety by neglecting / avoiding math. To get rid of math anxiety, one should deal more effectively with it in identical school situations. To do so one needs to gain control over those school situations.

By the time a student is in 6^th ot 7^th standard, he /she, if suffering with math anxiety starts avoiding math courses, perform poorly in the few math classes they do take, and earn low scores on math-achievement tests. Some researchers have proposed that students with little math aptitude in the first place justifiably fear grappling with numbers. However, this is not applicable to college students, according to another study. On the other hand, people’s intrusive worries about mathematics temporarily disrupt mental processes needed for doing arithmetic and drag down math competence, report Mark H. Ashcraft and Elizabeth P. Kirk, both psychologists at Cleveland (Ohio) State University. How math anxiety causes this effect is by making it difficult to hold new information in mind while simultaneously manipulating it. This capacity is known as working memory. Working memory is like RAM in a PC and is very critical for dealing with numbers. Mathematical anxiety eats up working-memory capability and makes it harder to learn mathematics, probably beginning in middle school,” Ashcraft has reported. They carried out three experiments, each with 50 to 60 college students. The male – female ratio was roughly same in these experiments. The participating students were cited low, moderate, or high levels of math anxiety on a questionnaire. These experiments concluded that that high math anxiety results in into poor performance on a non-conventional number-manipulation task, which required significant amount of working memory. Earlier studies have found that math anxiety temporarily boosts heart rate and other physical indicators of worry, notes psychologist David C. Geary of the University of Missouri in Columbia. Bower (2001) reported that psychological therapies that reduce math worries improve math performance.

Mathematical anxiety manifests itself in many different ways. While some students turn jittery; others appear calm and have mentally conceded to poor performance. Some students just run through exams and assignments, while others try their best to avoid it. Irrespective of how it manifests, mathematical anxiety is undesirable. Psychologists report that given a choice of pain or anxiety, people choose pain. There are many causes, but some of it comes from the nature of mathematics itself. Math, more than any other subject, requires us to think clearly, cleanly, and often abstractly. Therefore, there’s no formula for us to follow, and it is challenging in ways we can’t completely prepare for (Sutton 2003). Having anxious moments is a common occurrence and those moments often interfere with our performance. Math anxiety is often a complex, long-standing problem. Many people, who believe they are math anxious, are in reality, test anxious or poor math test-takers, and once they deal with these problems, they can be very successful in math.

Nolting (1990) experimental research study investigated the treatment effect of study skills training and/or counselling on math achievement levels. The study focused particularly on the affective characteristics that could influence academic achievement and students were assigned to one of three groups. The first group received math study skills training, the second received math study skills training and counselling related to math achievement, while the final group received no additional training or counselling. Success was measured by final exam grades and course grades. The results indicated students who had received both the math study skills training (1 credit) and counselling (5 – 1 hour sessions), particularly those with high anxiety and poor study skills, had significantly decreased their anxiety and improved their study skills. This group also had significantly higher final exam grades and overall final grades in comparison with the control group. Students who only received math study skills training also showed improvement in their study skills and a reduction in anxiety; however, they did not experience a significant change in their locus of control in comparison to the first treatment group. Their final course grades were significantly higher than the control group but their final exam scores, while higher, were not significantly different from the control group. Overall the experimental groups had a 66% pass rate while the control group had a 33% pass rate. The study also found the more often a student took the same math course; the less likely they were to pass it without some form of study skill intervention. The efficacy of study skills training to increase student grade point average and retention has been cited frequently in the literature on first year university students.

However, a meta-analysis by Hembree (1990) on math anxiety reported that cognitive behavioural treatment interventions with individuals with math anxiety were very successful, with individuals achieving math levels of students with no math anxiety. It is noteworthy that these individuals did not receive math instruction or practice therefore it is unlikely that the treatment itself increased their individual math competence. It is possible that individuals with math anxiety experienced relief from their anxiety as a result of treatment and were able to perform at levels that were more accurate of their achievement and competence.

Students’ perception of the nature of mathematics

Anthony’s (2000) study compared the perceptions of faculty and students in relation to academic achievement in first year math courses. Both parties agreed that motivation was an important influencing factor in student success; nonetheless, the students and faculty members differed in respect to assignment of the responsibility for learning. Students were more likely to place responsibility for their learning on faculty lectures and course design, whereas faculty members were more likely to place responsibility for failure on student factors.

Gender and achievement in Mathematics

There are contrasting reports about effect of gender on mathematical achievements. Many studies report in favour of the fair sex, while other report just opposite and some report it to be gender neutral. It is true that like everything education in general and mathematical education in particular was male bastion. However, with time females have entered in this subject as well and the question remains whether gender has any role in mathematical achievements. This question is relevant because historically, mathematics being males’ bastion, the subject was portrayed as a masculine subject and teaching methods and approaches are all designed without giving any consideration to the fair sex. As a conclusive research is not done on this aspect of mathematical education, therefore, this will be carried out in this present work.

Self concept or self esteem in learning mathematics

Randhawa, Beamer, and Lundberg (1993) found that generalized math self-efficacy mediated the effect of various math attitudes on math achievement. However, their generalized math self-efficacy was the composite score of the three subscales of the Mathematics Self-Efficacy Scale (MSES) judgments of capability to solve math problems, complete math-related tasks, and succeed in math-related courses.

Kabiri and Kiamanesh’s (2004) study was designed in order to investigate the role of personal variables such as math self-efficacy, math attitude, mathematics anxiety and prior math achievement on students’ math achievement using a causal path analytic model and to identify the direct and indirect effects of these variables on each other. The refined model revealed that math self-efficacy had the most effect on math performance than did math attitude and mathematics anxiety. Math self-efficacy also mediated the effect of math attitude and mathematics achievement. With regard to the inclusion of math anxiety in the model, it can be concluded that math anxiety mediates the effect of math self-efficacy and math attitude on mathematics performance. In addition, math attitude had a strong effect on math anxiety.

The purpose of the Kiamanesh, Hejazi and Esfahani’s (2004) study was to investigate the predictive and mediating role of self-efficacy beliefs and to identify the direct and indirect effects of mathematics self-efficacy, math self-concept, and perceived usefulness of mathematics, math anxiety and gender on math performance. Results from path analysis revealed that math self-efficacy was more predictive of math performance than was math self-concept, perceived usefulness of mathematics, or gender.

Fennema and Sherman (1976) incorporated perceived usefulness into their Mathematics Attitude Scales, and researchers have used these and other scales to demonstrate that perceived usefulness is consistently related to math performance (Armstrong 1985). As was the case with math confidence, correlations were generally moderate. As expected, students’ perceived usefulness of mathematics is also related to the confidence they express in their ability (Hackett and Betz 1989; Lent, Lopez and Bieschke 1991), (Pajares and Miller 1994).

Self confidence in math has also been linked to achievement with high math confidence correlating with low math anxiety (Kloosterman, 1988). Furthermore, those with high self confidence are more likely to choose math as a course to study than those who have low self confidence. Kloosterman asserts that self-confidence and achievement have a particularly strong relationship in comparison to other affective variables that influence learning.

A survey of 1100 community college students by Shiber (2003) found that almost 50% of students who had taken an algebra course and 50% of those who had not, were fearful of taking a math course in college. High anxiety has been a common experience among many university students when considering their first year math course, often fearing they lack the skills necessary for success or that the subject matter is too difficult.

Different affective attributes which may have effect on students mathematical performance include students confidence in doing mathematical problems, liking and disliking of subject, the extent to which they see Mathematics as a male domain and students views on concept of mathematics. Apart from that the effects of students study habits and self esteem to mathematics performance also play very important role in the process of learning mathematics.

Students study habits in learning mathematics

Unfortunately, some high school students do not have mastery of basic arithmetic. And certainly it makes it challenging to teach students algebra, for example, if they do not have a strong foundation of basic skills. However, to continue to repeat this kind of arithmetic with them at the expense of letting them deal with challenging mathematics is likely to lead to their never progressing much further. We have all seen too many examples of students who get such a negative attitude about mathematics and their ability to do mathematics that they leave it (and sometimes school) at the earliest possible moment.

Numerous studies have examined the role of study skills and student motivation on academic achievement levels in math courses. Student involvement and engagement in the learning process has been consistently highly correlated with student learning (Hunter and Linder, 2005). A study comparing Canadian math students with other OECD countries (Statistics Canada, 2005) focused on student achievement, specifically addressing the role of attitudes, perceptions and family background. The results suggest that 15 year old students, who had higher levels of engagement with math, as measured by motivation, confidence, and positive feelings toward the subject, were more likely to learn more and be open to further learning. In particular, the motivation to learn as indicated by interest, enjoyment, and perceived usefulness was related to math achievement. Despite the complexity of the relationship between engagement in math and achievement, it was noted that low anxiety, high motivation, and high self confidence were related to higher outcomes in math.

Hamersma’s (1992) study examined the effect of an independent study skills course on student performance in a college math course. Each student was required to enrol in both a math course and an evening lab. The average passing rate for the students in the math course was 60% compared to a 80% passing rate among those who were required to take a one-hour credit math study skills course. In another study, the LASSI, (Learning and Study Strategies Inventory) was used to measure the pre and post learning of students in a first-year level college study skills course (Fast, 1993). Among the 21 out of 25 students that remained in the course, there were significant differences in the LASSI subscales for anxiety, information processing, main ideas, support techniques, self-testing, and review, test strategies, and preparing for tests after taking the study skills course. Furthermore, the intervention was also found to be successful in improving students’ overall grade point average.

An investigation of the study skills of 514 first year students at a Kentucky University who completed a first year orientation class, found significant improvements on many of the LASSI subscales (Hulick and Higginson, 1989). Students who employed study strategies, particularly in the area of motivation, concentration, and test taking, received higher grades at the completion of their first year. Furthermore, students who received lower scores on the LASSI subscales in the areas of attitude, time management, and anxiety reported college as being more difficult. Students who reported using the study strategies more frequently were also more likely to see themselves as more skilful and knowledgeable when it came to the learning process.

Ashcroft and Kirk’s (2001), study found that individuals with high math anxiety experienced smaller working memory spans. The reduction in memory capacity resulted in longer reaction times and increased errors while performing computational functions. The authors argue that as an individual difference, the role of math anxiety requires greater empirical attention, particularly focusing on its impact on working memory capacity and functioning. Nonetheless, they note that some have argued that individuals low in math competence are more likely to be anxious thereby confounding the results.

Conclusions

Though lot of work has been done on different aspects of attitudinal variables affecting performance of students in mathematics, it can be seen that there is still no comprehensive work exploring all the aspects in one work. Besides, these works are mainly concentrated on students in their earlier grade and hardly any work has investigated the students in first year for effect of affective variables on their performance in mathematics. This is very important phase in one’s life as first year can be seen as a transient period in their academic career, when they shift from school to colleges and they have to cope with many personal challenges as well besides new and unfamiliar concepts in mathematics. Therefore, a comprehensive work is needed to investigate the impact of attitudinal variables on the performance in mathematics for first year students. This is what has been attempted in this work. For this purpose a detailed questionnaire has been prepared to assess attitudinal variables of the subjects, who will then be grouped in different control groups to correlate their performance in mathematics to their attitudinal attributes.

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