I brought together two strands of literature, one investigating the moderate but persistent underachievement of girls in mathematics in most countries, and the other examining the role of self-efficacy and other self-beliefs in predicting behaviour and achievement. I implemented detailed decompositions of the gender mathematics gap, both at the…

Self-regulated learning has been shown to have a positive and long-lasting impact on students' academic development, employability and career progression. Emotions, motivation and metacognition play an important role in students' ability to monitor and regulate their learning, particularly when studying and engaging with Science, Technology,…

The instrument of mathematics enrolment choice motivation (MECM) is designed to measure factors that influence students' decisions to keep or drop mathematics in Year 11. Using survey responses from 289 Year 11 students, this paper presents the initial form of the instrument, examines its factor structure, internal consistency and discriminant…

Studies, such as Programme for International Student Assessment 2012, indicate that there are gender based differences in measures of mathematics anxiety, self-concept and self-efficacy among students. In this study we explore self-efficacy, self-concept and mathematics anxiety in a sample of Year 7 and 8 South Australian students to examine if…

Mathematics competency is fast becoming an essential requirement in ever greater parts of day-to-day work and life. Thus, creating strategies for improving mathematics learning in students is a major goal of education research. However, doing so requires an ability to look at many aspects of mathematics learning, such as demographics and…

In small-group workshops, a joint initiative of the researcher and the student counsellor, primary (elementary) pre-service teachers (PSTs) wrote about critical incidents in their mathematics learning, and shared them with the group. Then, PSTs read extracts about mathematics anxiety (maths anxiety), and wrote and shared their reflections…

The Zuckerman Affect Adjective Check List (AACL) is used to measure trait anxiety and situation-specific trait anxiety relating to peer interaction, vocational aspiration, and the learning of English, mathematics, science and social studies. The subjects were 262 grade 10 students attending an Australian metropolitan high school. Additional…

Presents the findings of a study done in Australia which sought to determine which factors influence students to take mathematics courses in the 12th grade. Results suggested that males were more likely to take math than females, and positive attitudes about math in early school years directly influenced participation in math at grade 12. (TW)