Chapter II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

Review of Related Literature

Mathematics as defined in “your dictionary.com”, is the group of sciences

(including arithmetic, geometry, algebra, calculus, etc. dealing with quantities,
magnitudes, and forms and their relationships, attributes, etc., by the use of numbers and
symbols.” Ernest (1989) mentioned that learning mathematics involves more than basic
knowledge of facts, skills and procedures. He added that it has a crucial involvement of
conceptual structures, the general strategies in solving problems, attitudes towards the
subject and appreciation of mathematics.

According to the latest Gallup youth survey conducted in 2004 (as cited by Saad,
2005), the subject that the teenagers find most difficult in school is mathematics. Thus,
Saad(2005) said that it is not surprising how the subject has the lowest performance rate.
The reasons were not mentioned, however, Stites (1993) said that people have the
tendency to blame the educators of the poor performance of the students in math.
Nevertheless, Temple professor and mathematician John Allen Paulos (as cited in Stites,
1993) directed these problems to a number of factors. Paulos (as cited in Stites, 1993)
attributed this problem to the educational system that "emphasizes practice without
incorporating the concept." In addition to this, he mentioned that this is also partly
because of the mentality that math is not for everyone. According to Paulos (as cited in
Stites, 1993), people think that math is only for a selected few or the left-brained ones.
However, Paulos (as cited in Stites, 1993) disagreed with this as everyone has the ability
to do mathematics and problem solving as long as they know the basics. Another problem
pointed out by Paulos (as cited in Stites, 1993), is the hierarchical way math is taught
where teachers teach algebra and geometry instead of more applicable ones such as
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probability and statistics for their students to have a high percentage in passing
standardized exams.

In the Philippine concept, as cited in a research conducted by Cabahug and Ladot

(2005), the University of the Philippines’ greatest failure is in mathematics. It is also said
that repetition in mathematics is common among UP students that almost one out of three
repeat a mathematics course. Cabahug and Ladot (2005) also said that the faculties of the
UP Cebu Natural Science and Mathematics Division or NSMD have felt the declining
performance of students in basic mathematics. It is also stated that the attitude towards
mathematics and achievement in mathematics have always been a great concern.

Fullarton (1993) as cited in Cabahug and Ladot (2005), stated that poor attitude
towards mathematics is often being said as one of the contributing factors to lower
participation and less success in the courses. Neale(1969) still cited in Cabahug and
Ladot (2005), said that the attitude towards mathematics affects performance as
performance in turn affects attitudes.

In the study conducted by Cabahug and Ladot(2005), there were 941

students in four school years excluding transferees and those who withdrew from Math
11 and Math 17 were the subjects of the study. The dependent variable was the students’
performance in Math 11 or Math 17 measured by a dichotomous criterion of “pass” or
“fail”. The researchers stated that the UPCAT mathematics ability, University predicted
grade, attitude towards the subject, degree program and type of high school the students
graduated from are the factors of success and failure of students. The results of the study
showed that the students who took up Math 11 and Math 17 got a passing rate of 73.3%
and 73.2% respectively. The highest failure rate is 36% for math 11 and 31.2% for math
17. The researchers stated that these results showed that the training of the incoming
freshmen is deficient.

Furthermore, Cabahug and Ladot(2005) said that for students who were required
to take math 11, their only significant factor is the attitude of students towards the
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subject. The results of their study also showed that for students enrolled in degree
programs requiring Math 17 in addition to UPCAT mathematical ability and attitude
towards mathematics, the type of school is also a significant factor. Davidson and
Levitov (1993), on the other hand, point these difficulties to the condition that fears
mathematics.

Overstreet (1951), believed that fear is the most deceitful emotional force that has
the greatest impact on our behavior. He said that fear "makes us do what we ought not to
do and leave undone what we ought to do." The author stated reasons on why the "fear-
problem" remains unsolved despite its length of occurrence in human history. Part of this,
Overstreet (1951) mentioned, is our lack of ability to recognize fear as it is. He added that
fear disguises itself in a wide range of emotions which are, more often than not, an
opposite of fear such that of courage, ambition, humility, sacrifices or loyalty.

Ficarra (1990), on another hand, described fear as a "basic emotional response" to

a certain situation. He classified fear into four types: anxiety, panic, paranoia, and phobia.
According to him, the distinction between these four types of fear lies in the intensity and
how long these fear lingers. Ficcara (1990) said that the first two fears, anxiety and panic,
stays on for just a fleeting moment or a short while, the only difference between the two
is that while anxiety is a vague feeling in which a person fears what may happen, panic is
just a sudden unreasonable fear. On another hand, he described the two remaining fear as
lasting and is not just a cause of a single event - paranoia is a fear in which a person
believes he/she is being followed (this could happen every time) and phobia is a intense
fear on something that others find normal (this could happen when an environmental
stimuli presents itself).

Since fear of mathematics happens only at moments when a person has to answer
mathematical problems, Smith (1997) referred the condition as math anxiety. He defined
it as a condition when a person feels helpless and frustrated in doing mathematics. He
stated that not only “normal people” are prone to math anxiety but even those who are
well-acquainted with math. Aside from other biological reasons such as mental
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retardation, the author mentioned that the causes of math anxiety can also be pointed
towards the social context and learning strategies. Smith (1997) explained that labelling
math enthusiasts as “geeks or nerds” causes a destroyed image of math in the society.
This concept of math as only for “certain people,” he stated, provides a reason for the
students for not being able to do math. Smith added that the strategies practiced by the
educators which he called as “learning-by-rote (memorization and repetition)” is “dull
and unrewarding” making the students loathe the subject even more.

Davidson and Levitov (1993) also considered that bad experiences regarding math
may also lead to math anxiety. The shame when one can’t answer math problems, the
teacher’s frustration when students can’t understand what they teach and unsupportive
parents are some examples of bad experiences with math that were stated by the authors.
Additions to those above are childhood experiences (change of schools, divorced parents
and bullying), unmatched teaching and learning styles and society’s beliefs that math is
for men and not for women.

In another study, the researchers Bilbase and Shashidar (2010) in a study entitled
“Images, Anxieties and Attitudes Toward Mathematics” said that there could be various
reasons for fear of the subject mathematics. ’Strawderman, (as cited in Bilbase and
Shashidar, 2010) proposed three domains to study mathematics anxiety:
social/motivational domain, intellectual/educational domain, and
psychological/emotional domain. Bilbase and Shashidar (2010) clarified that the
social/motivational domain includes those forces that act upon a person through the
agencies of family, friends, and society as a whole. The authors described that the
intellectual/ educational domain is comprised of those influences that are cognitive in
nature. According to them, these cognitive influences include but are not limited to, the
knowledge and skills an individual has and or is expected to acquire and his or her
perception of success or failure in them. The authors explained that the
psychological/emotional domain is formed by the faculties that are affective in nature.
They continued that it is largely comprised of the individual’s emotional history,
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reactions to stimuli, and arousal states. Hence, the researchers said that the continuum
associated with this domain is feelings wherein at either end of the feelings continuum lie
anxiety and confidence.

Bilbase and Shashidar (2010) continued that the images in the classrooms and the
means of teaching may have a significant impact on shaping the attitude towards
mathematics. They proposed that another thing that may affect a child’s perception of
mathematics is the attitude of the parents toward the subject. They said that most likely,
parents that show negativity towards mathematics will give the child a negative attitude
of it - this shows how much parental encouragement is important in a child’s learning.
They also added that anxieties and attitudes play significant role in learning mathematics.

Part of these attitudes is a child’s interest in mathematics, which is fear’s

counterpart. According to an article written by Jay Prakash(2011) that was published in
preservearticles.com, interest, in Latin, means, “it matters” or “it concerns.” He said that
interest may refer to the motivating force that drives the individual to attend to a person,
an object or an activity. He added that interest might be the cause of an activity and the
result of participation in the activity. According to him, people “tend to attended to such
objects that interest them.”

Prakash(2011) continued that interest might not be the same for everybody. He
said that our interests are governed by our drives, motives and emotions, but mostly our
instincts. An example he offered was the instinctive interest of teenagers in clothes or
appearance may be due to their drive to attract members of the opposite sex.

Hidi (2011) in a study entitled “Interest and Its Contribution as a Mental

Resource in Learning” stated that our preference in processing certain types of
information is determined by our interest most of the time. She continued that our
interests can also affect our cognitive functions and learning. She proposed that there is a
huge difference in psychological and physiological processes when the information
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received is interesting or not. She further said that there are unique aspects not present
when processing uninteresting information.

In another article entitled “Creating an Interest in Learning Science”, Paris and

Turner (as cited in Keiff, 2005), said that interest plays an important role in motivating
students to study. If the learner has an interest in the subject matter, it is more likely that
the learner will engage into a good study habit that will help the student expand the
knowledge at hand.

Review of Related Studies

The foregoing studies which were reviewed by the researcher gave basic insights
and ideas in organizing this research proposal.

In March 24, 2015, Capate, and Lapinid conducted a study assessing the
Mathematics performance of grade 8 students as basis for enhancing instruction and
aligning with K to 12 Curriculum. Based on the findings of their study, the results of the
formative tests and the Mathematics Achievement Test (MAT) showed that students’
achievement is in the Beginning and in the Developing level for the three content areas of
the Grade 8 Mathematics curriculum. These imply that they struggle with their
understanding or possess only the minimum knowledge and skills and core
understandings; pre-requisite and fundamental knowledge and/or skills have not been
acquired or developed adequately to aid understanding.

Most of the least-mastered contents of the Mathematics Achievement Test were

because of the non-alignment between the Objectives and the Instruction. There was an
imbalance in the system that led to poor surface learning. The non-alignment signified
inconsistencies, unmet expectations, and practices that contradict what is preached. This
study relates to the present study, as the results of formative tests and the Mathematics
Achievement Test (MAT) measures the learning performance of the grade 8 students.
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A thesis presented by Benjamin Schenkel, about the impact of an attitude toward

mathematics on mathematics performance, found out that after the data analysis was
complete from all of the surveys, the researcher believes that having a positive attitude
about mathematics does have a positive impact on a student’s classroom performance of
students at St. Mary’s School. Based on the data collected and tabulated, the research
does show that there is a positive correlation between a student’s overall attitude toward
mathematics and their success in the classroom. One of the concerns with this is the level
of the respondent’s grades that were received during the third grading period. With such a
large majority or students responding having a high level of success, this could have
influenced the overall mean of attitude assessment. Generally with children, they tend to
like the things they do well, thus influencing their responses on the attitude survey. All
but one class did show a positive correlation between the two variables, although grades
one grade four, grade five, Mathematics: Attitude and Performance and grade seven have
a correlation that would be considered a weak positive. Grades two, three, and six
showed a mildly strong correlation.

The conducted study relates about the responds of the students in their
mathematics performance. In the conducted study, the behavioral effect to the students
were determined, while in this study, specific responds will be measure that will be based
on their mathematics learning performance.

The study of Mohktar, Yusof and Misiran about factors affecting students’
performance in mathematics, emphasizes the causes of the student’s failure and progress
in Mathematics. The study is related to the present investigation since, the problem that
was conducted is one of the objectives of this study, in where, the researcher will
determine some factors affecting student’s learning mathematical performance.

The study was carried out to explore the factors influencing students’
performance in Business Mathematics course at UiTM Kedah. Results suggest that all
the items were retained and were categorized under four different categories which
are Attitude, Role of teacher, Peers and Interest. The first factor (Attitude) comprised of
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eighteen items and six items were categorized under Factor 2 (Role of Teacher). As in
Factor 3 (Peers), seven items were included. These items 7, 13, 15 and 29 were
categorized under Factor 4 (Interest).

Generally, these four factors will become a very helpful indicator in

discussing the important element of students’ beliefs about mathematics. In the future,
it will increase the performance in mathematics. The findings of their study to be
beneficial for UiTM Kedah in order to provide a model to be used as a yardstick to solve
under performance in mathematics courses. It will also give in depth understanding to the
underlying problem in learning mathematics, and consequently will improve
mathematics performance and achievement in the near future, not only for UiTM
Kedah, but for students in higher institutions in general.

In relation to factors, another study conducted, focuses on the factors influencing

students’ mathematics performance in some selected colleges of education in Ghana.
According to their summary;

Academic performance is affected by a number of factors including admission

grade, social economic status, school background and many more. Students’ personal
factors and school based factors are the focus of the study described in this paper. The
study was a descriptive study in which a survey research design was adopted. Three
Colleges where randomly selected for the study. A total of 50 students from these
Colleges participated in the study. Data for the study was collected through student’s
questionnaire. The findings revealed that inadequate teaching and learning materials as
well as lecturer method of instruction are some of the factors which affect students’
performance. The study also revealed that teachers and students’ self-motivation also
influence mathematics performance. On the basis of the findings, the following
recommendations were made; interactive method of teaching which are core to
improving students’ holistic understanding of mathematical concepts needs to be used by
mathematics teachers. Also stake holders need to provide adequate teaching and learning
resource to the Colleges of education.
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Hence, they concluded, that the study was carried out to explore the factors
influencing College of Education students’ performance in mathematics. It was
concluded based on the findings that; factors such as , lecture method of instruction
which turns the learner into passive participants in the learning process as while as
inadequate teaching and learning material affect students’ performance in mathematics.

A collaborative game-based learning approach to improving students' learning

performance in science courses, a study conducted by Sung and Wang, wherein, they
measured the learning performance of the science courses.

In the study, a collaborative game-based learning environment is developed by

integrating a grid-based Mind tool to facilitate the students to share and organize what
they have learned during the game-playing process. To evaluate the effectiveness of the
proposed approach, an experiment has been conducted in an elementary school natural
science course to examine the students' performance in terms of their learning attitudes,
learning motivation, and self-efficacy and learning achievements. From their
experimental results, it is found that the Mind tool-integrated collaborative educational
game not only benefits the students in promoting their learning attitudes and learning
motivation, but also improves their learning achievement and self-efficacy owing to the
provision of the knowledge organizing and sharing facility embedded in the collaborative
gaming environment.

The study is related to the current investigation in terms of measuring the

student’s performance. They are both assessing the results of the student’s responses.

In relative to learning performance, measuring emotions in students’ learning and

performance: The Achievement Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ), focused on quantifying
the performance of the subjects in their emotional state. The proposed study also focuses
in assessing such learning performance based on their independent variable.

According to the study, aside from test anxiety scales, measurement instruments
assessing students’ achievement emotions are largely lacking. This article reports on the
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construction, reliability, internal validity, and external validity of the Achievement

Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ) which is designed to assess various achievement
emotions experienced by students in academic settings. The instrument contains 24 scales
measuring enjoyment, hope, pride, relief, anger, anxiety, shame, hopelessness, and
boredom during class, while studying, and when taking tests and exams. Scale
construction used a rational–empirical strategy based on Pekrun’s (2006) control-value
theory of achievement emotions and prior exploratory research. The instrument was
tested in a study using a sample of university students (N = 389). Findings indicate that
the scales are reliable, internally valid as demonstrated by confirmatory factor analysis,
and externally valid in terms of relationships with students’ control-value appraisals,
learning, and academic performance. The results provide further support for the control-
value theory and help to elucidate the structure and role of emotions in educational
settings. Directions for future research and implications for educational practice are
discussed.

On January 2004, a study conducted by Barbara Adams and Jery Lipka,

“Culturally Based Math Education as a Way to Improve Alaska Native Students’ Math
Performance”, which is inline with enhancing native students’ math learning
performance. The study proposed a great study as a great help on the native people. As it
also relates to the conducting study, because they measure such learning performance
basically in mathematics subject.

Culturally based instruction has long been touted as a preferred approach to

improving the performance of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) students’
academic performance. However, there has been scant research to support this conjecture,
particularly when quantitative data and quasi-experimental designs are included. The
results of this study show that the culturally based math curriculum, Building a Fish
Rack: Investigations into Proof, Properties, Perimeter, and Area, enabled sixth grade
Yup’ik students and their urban counterparts to increase their mathematical
understanding of perimeter and area.
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The study involved one semester’s worth of data (258 students in 15 classes). The
study was a strong quasi-experimental design with random assignment and the results
were based on pre- and post-test score differences. The study involved one urban school
district, Fairbanks, and four rural school districts with approximately a 97% Yup’ik
population. The study showed that the difference in test results between all treatment
groups and all control groups was significant beyond the accepted standard of p.
Although the urban treatment group gained the most from this curriculum, the most
important finding is that the rural treatment group outperformed the rural control group at
a significant level beyond the accepted standard of p. The study is encouraging, as it
shows that the treatment effect on Yup’ik students narrows the long-standing academic
gap when comparing that group’s and the Yup’ik control group’s relative performance
against the urban control group. Further studies are necessary to determine if the results
can be replicated, if the results are tied to a specific topic area, and if a study that uses
complementary research methods can unpack the factors behind the gain.