Attitude toward mathematics among the students at Nazarbayev University Foundation Year Programme

TL;DR

This study assesses the attitude toward mathematics among Nazarbayev University Foundation Year students, finding generally positive attitudes and correlations with prior achievement, with some differences based on specialization.

Contribution

It provides quantitative analysis of students' attitudes toward mathematics and explores factors influencing these attitudes, including achievement and specialization.

Findings

Positive overall attitude with mean score 3.999 out of 5.

Significant positive correlation between high school math achievement and attitude.

Differences in attitude based on specialization, but not gender.

Abstract

This article investigates the attitude toward mathematics among the students enrolled in the Foundation Year Programme at Nazarbayev University. The study is conducted quantitatively and an inventory developed by Tapia and Marsh II is adopted in this research. The inventory consists of 40 statements on the five-point Likert scale. Gender, specialization and final high school score in mathematics are collected. The number of valid returned questionnaires is 108. There are 55 males, 53 females, 73 Mathematical-Physics (MP), 22 Biology-Chemistry (BC) and 13 International Relations-Economics (IRE) students. Generally, they have a positive attitude toward mathematics, with the score mean and standard deviation are 3.999 and 0.531 out of five, respectively. We confirm a hypothesis on a positive correlation between previous high achievement in mathematics and favorable attitude toward it. The correlation value is $r = 0.300$, its effect size is medium and it is extremely significant ($p$-value $= 0.0008 < 0.001$). There is no significant difference between male and female students in terms of their attitude toward mathematics ($t = 0.6804$, $p$-value $= 0.2489 > 0.05$). There is a very significant difference between students who specialize in IRE and MP in terms of their attitude toward mathematics ($F(2,105) = 5.6848$, $p$-value $= 0.0045 < 0.01$).