Mathematically poor students exhibit poor academic performance, as well as increased mental illnesses and behavioural issues; however, the learning dilemma faced by mathematically poor students and the factors affecting their classroom engagements remain unclear. To address this issue, the Perceived Maths Teacher Support Scale, Classroom…

Background: Students' academic performance and learning experiences are crucial in school education, yet their relationships with instructional characteristics remain an open question. Aims: The present study examined how cognitive activation and teacher support were associated with students' academic emotions and achievement in math classrooms…

The primary goals of this study are to investigate if cognitive activation increases mathematics self-efficacy, which in turn alleviates anxiety and to examine the moderating role of internal migrant status. Hierarchical linear models and multilevel structural equation models were employed to datasets of 3088 fourth graders from 57 classrooms in…

This study investigated the different effects of teacher-student rapport on urban and rural students' math learning via mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics anxiety in China. The participants were 8145 urban and rural fourth graders (mean age = 10 years old) in a central city of China. The findings indicated that (a) compared with rural…

This study used large-scale regional monitoring data of eighth-grade mathematics students at the compulsory education stage from various areas of mainland China. It extracted a total of 156,661 students and 4,676 junior high school mathematics teachers from 146 districts and counties located in six regions (provinces or cities). The study analysed…

Understanding the development of mathematics self-efficacy has important implications. Based on Bandura's four sources of self-efficacy, most previous studies mainly examined whether the sources predicted or correlated with mathematics self-efficacy, which might have oversimplified the underlying mechanism of self-efficacy development. This study…

This study investigated the mediating roles of self-efficacy and anxiety on the effects of teacher-student relationship on mathematical problem-solving ability. A total of 1667 fifth graders from central China participated in the large-scale survey. The findings indicated that (1) teacher-student relationship had a direct and positive effect on…

Students from a Chinese background demonstrate outstanding performance in international mathematics assessments. Besides cultural characteristics, innate mathematics ability is often referred to as the reason for their performance. This paper aims to debunk this assumption of innate ability and provide an alternate perspective to the discussion by…