| Abstract [eng] |
Factors Affecting Teenage Girls’ and Boys’ Mathematics Achievement There is noticeable difference between girls and boys choosing to study science, technology, math, and engineering programs even though girls tend to outperform boys in math achievement. Not only students’ actual abilities can add to such differences, but also their beliefs and emotions experienced in academic settings. Therefore, this research is analyzing girls’ and boys’ differences in mathematics oriented implicit theories of intelligence, fear of failure, negative emotions after math failure and nonverbal intelligence. In addition, we investigated how factors mentioned above predict math achievement. Research results suggest that even though girls achieve higher math grades, they have higher fear of math failure and experience more intense math related negative emotions than boys. There were no significant sex differences in mathematics oriented implicit theories of intelligence and nonverbal intelligence. Moreover, results show that mathematics oriented incremental theory and negative emotions predicted students’ math achievement over and beyond nonverbal intelligence. For girls, mathematics oriented entity theory and negative emotions predicted their math achievement over and beyond nonverbal intelligence. For boys, only nonverbal intelligence predicted their math achievement. The results of this research suggest new insights on math achievement that can be valuable for students’ learning process. |
