A Study of the Validity and Reliability of a Mathematics Lesson Attitude Scale and Student Attitudes

Murat Tezer; Deniz Özcan

doi:10.12973/eurasia.2015.1349a

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Murat Tezer ¹ ^* , Deniz Özcan ¹

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¹ Near East University^* Corresponding Author

Abstract

Background Attitudes of the students towards mathematics lessons are very important in terms of their success and motivation. The purpose of this study is to develop a scale for the assessment of primary school students’ attitudes towards mathematics courses in the 2nd and 3rd grades, to analyse its validity-reliability structure and to determine the students' attitudes towards mathematics. Materials and methods Emotional facial expressions are used in the scale because students can have reading and writing literacy difficulties in the 2nd and 3rd grades. The study group of this research consisted of 350 primary school students studying in the 2nd and 3rd grades of primary schools located in Northern Cyprus. Results As a result of a reliability analysis, the items of the scale were decreased to ten items, and the Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was 0.92. Factor analysis results suggested that the scale was gathered in one factor and total variance explained was 57.796% for one factor. Conclusions In general, it is suggested that students’ attitudes towards mathematics were ‘happy ’.

Keywords

mathematics education
attitude scale
emotional facial expressions

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed, 2015, Volume 11, Issue 2, 371-379

https://doi.org/10.12973/eurasia.2015.1349a

Publication date: 02 Apr 2015

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APA

Tezer, M., & Özcan, D. (2015). A Study of the Validity and Reliability of a Mathematics Lesson Attitude Scale and Student Attitudes. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 11(2), 371-379. https://doi.org/10.12973/eurasia.2015.1349a

Vancouver

Tezer M, Özcan D. A Study of the Validity and Reliability of a Mathematics Lesson Attitude Scale and Student Attitudes. EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed. 2015;11(2):371-9. https://doi.org/10.12973/eurasia.2015.1349a

AMA

Tezer M, Özcan D. A Study of the Validity and Reliability of a Mathematics Lesson Attitude Scale and Student Attitudes. EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed. 2015;11(2), 371-379. https://doi.org/10.12973/eurasia.2015.1349a

Chicago

Tezer, Murat, and Deniz Özcan. "A Study of the Validity and Reliability of a Mathematics Lesson Attitude Scale and Student Attitudes". Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education 2015 11 no. 2 (2015): 371-379. https://doi.org/10.12973/eurasia.2015.1349a

Harvard

Tezer, M., and Özcan, D. (2015). A Study of the Validity and Reliability of a Mathematics Lesson Attitude Scale and Student Attitudes. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 11(2), pp. 371-379. https://doi.org/10.12973/eurasia.2015.1349a

MLA

Tezer, Murat et al. "A Study of the Validity and Reliability of a Mathematics Lesson Attitude Scale and Student Attitudes". Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, vol. 11, no. 2, 2015, pp. 371-379. https://doi.org/10.12973/eurasia.2015.1349a