Title: Advancing sharing and communication in the field of mathematics self-concepts and attitudes by clarifying terminology.

Target audience: Researchers and educators interested in exploring students' mathematics self-beliefs and confidences and advancing work in this field.

Number of participants: Up to twenty, perhaps.

Outcome for participants: Enhanced understanding of the nature of mathematics confidences and self-concepts. Opportunity to advance terminology in this field, enhance accessibility, and thereby increase it's effects on practice.

Abstract:

It is both timely and imperative to resolve inconsistencies in terminology and measurement in the literature on mathematics self-concepts, confidences, self-efficacies and related attitudes in mathematics learning. Lack of coherence in the literature hinders research in this field and make reports difficult to interpret and findings nigh impossible to compare.

ICME provides a valuable opportunity for education researchers and practitioners to come together to discuss appropriate use of terms like confidence and self-efficacy, and to examine instruments for their measurement.

Why now?

Educators in too many countries report declining interest in and commitment to mathematics studies. Given the need to attract students to mathematics, and to counter the damaging legacies of low mathematics self-esteem and low interest, there is an urgent need to better understand our students' self-beliefs and attitudes, and to use those understandings to inform educational planning and practice. Self-concepts and related attitudes play important roles in the learning choices students make, their learning behaviours, and their performance. For example, a study of the factors that influenced more than 500 first-year Australian students 9Cretchley, Fuller & McDonald, 2000) found that self-beliefs about mathematics ability were a major influence behind their choice to study mathematics at university.

Yet there have been few attempts to clarify the role of mathematics self-concepts and attitudes in learning. Reviewing literature in the field of affect in mathematics education, Leder and Grootenboer (2005) found ‘few studies in which the difficult task was attempted of exploring the relationship between affect and a range of other important factors including cognition, learning and achievement.’.

Some researchers explore students’ attitudes via case studies and journal entries, but few have accepted the challenge of quantifying affective factors, exploring relationships with learning approaches and progress, and monitoring changes. Theories not yet well-developed, terminology used differently, even ambiguously, and varying research instruments, some untested, make interpretation of the literature difficult, and leave researchers open to criticism. Research outcomes have also been variable. Correlations between affective factors and performance vary widely. Leder and Grootenboer described ‘tantalizing’ findings and ‘provocative glimpses’ of the interaction between affect, teaching and learning.

Let us use the opportunity ICME offers to bring together interested parties to try to move this important and too often neglected field forward.

To stimulate this effort and perhaps serve as a starting point, as a passionate and long-term researcher in the field, I offer my analysis of the terminology and instruments of four different research teams representing a wide range of current expertise in the field, and raise proposals for the terminology for debate.