Explorations of Students' Mathematical Beliefs and Behavior

Source abstract

A questionnaire with 70 closed and 11 open questions was administered to 230 mathematics students enrolled in Grades 10 through 12, the majority of whom were enrolled in the traditional year-long 10th-grade course in plane geometry. Sections of the questionnaire dealt with the students' attributions of success or failure; their comparative perceptions of mathematics, English, and social studies; their view of mathematics as a discipline; and their attitude toward mathematics. The data, which are closely tied to a series of classroom and protocol studies, suggest the resolution of contradictory patterns of data in other attitude surveys, where students simultaneously claim that “mathematics is mostly memorizing” but that mathematics is a creative and useful discipline in which they learn to think.