27 Jan Math Attitude Survey: AMPED Fall 2015

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  • Untitled1During the first week of fall 2015 courses at Loveland High School, students enrolled in the Algebra 1 in Manufacturing Processes, Entrepreneurship, and Design (AMPED) course took a pre-survey to measure their attitudes toward math. At the end of the fall 2015 semester, AMPED students took the post-survey.
  • There were 44 students who took both the pre- and post-surveys, and their results were included in this descriptive analysis. There were 21 students who took either the pre-survey or post-survey, but did not take both; subsequently, their results were excluded.
  • The survey is based upon a study funded by the National Science Foundation and developed by Kloosterman and Stage (1992)[1] to measure beliefs about math.
  • The survey consisted of 15 items, where students marked Likert-scale options of “strongly disagree” or “disagree” or “uncertain” or “agree” or “strongly agree” to document their level of agreement with each statement. The items were divided into three sections:
    • Hard Work: Items of this nature investigated to what degree students believed that they needed to work hard in order to be successful in math. An example of this type of question is “Hard work can increase one’s ability to do math.”
    • Useful: Items of this nature investigated to what degree students believed that math is relevant to life outside of school. An example of this type of question is “Mathematics has no relevance to my life.”
    • Process: Items of this nature investigated to what degree students believed that learning how to solve math problems were as important as getting the right answer. An example of this type of question is “Doing math is about finding the right answer to a problem.”
  • Higher numbers suggest more positive attitudes toward math. The figure on the following page summarizes attitudes of AMPED students at the beginning and end of the fall 2015 semester.
  • Although there are too few respondents to create a statistically significant study, results suggest that AMPED students increased favorably in their attitudes toward math over the course of the semester.

Research conducted by:

Math Attitude Surveys | AMPED Fall 2015

Summary by Christina H. Paguyo, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, College of Engineering, Colorado State University

[1] Kloosterman, P., & Stage, F.K. (1992). Measuring beliefs about mathematical problem solving. School Science and Mathematics, 92(3), 109-115.