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| Impact of Gender Difference on Mathematical Attitude of School Going Adolescents of District Shamli (Uttar Pradesh): A Comparative Study | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Paper Id :
15955 Submission Date :
11/04/2022 Acceptance Date :
19/04/2022 Publication Date :
25/04/2022
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| Abstract | The impact of mathematics is visible everywhere. It influences every aspects of our life whether it is cultural, social psychological and vocational. It trains the mind of people, creates very good habits and develops increasing awareness about them. This study explored the effects of gender on mathematical attitude of secondary level adolescents of district Shamli in Uttar Pradesh. A sample of 400 students (200 males and 200 females) from 10 schools of district Shamli in Uttar Pradesh was used for the study. The result of analysis showed that there was significant difference between mathematical attitude of adolescent boys and girls. Gender difference was found to have effect on mathematical attitude of school going adolescents. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Keywords | Mathematical Attitude, Adolescent, Gender Difference. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Introduction |
The impact of mathematics is visible everywhere. It influences every aspects of our life whether it is cultural, social psychological and vocational. It trains the mind of people, creates very good habits and develops increasing awareness about them. Mathematics learning must be compulsory every event happening around us demand some knowledge of simple mathematical facts or principles, without this knowledge we will be at loss. Learning of mathematics in school not only gives the students adequate mathematical knowledge and requisite skills to solve their daily life obstacles but also train them in proper mathematical methods of investigation of problems and creates a mathematical attitude in them. A mathematical attitude was linked with “an ardent curiosity, fertile imagination and tone of experimental inquiry”.
Mathematics is the science that deals with the logic of shape, quantity and arrangement. Math is all around us, in everything we do. It is the building block for everything in our daily lives, including mobile devices, architecture (ancient and modern), art, money, engineering, and even sports. Haskell Curry defined mathematics simply as "the science of formal systems" Mathematics is the mental activity which consists in carrying out constructs one after the other. The German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss referred to mathematics as "the Queen of the Sciences". More recently, Marcus du Sautoy has called mathematics "the Queen of Science- the main driving force behind scientific discovery". The philosopher Karl Popper observed that "most mathematical theories are, like those of physics and biology, hypothetico-deductive”. Pure mathematics therefore turns out to be much closer to the natural sciences whose hypotheses are conjectures, than it seemed even recently. Popper also noted that "I shall certainly admit a system as empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience”. |
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| Aim of study | Following were the objectives of the study. 1. To study the mathematical attitude of school going adolescents boys. 2. To study the mathematical attitude of school going adolescents girls. 3. To study the significant difference of school going adolescent boys and girls in relation to their attitude towards mathematics. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Review of Literature | In view of the above the following studies
relevant to the present investigation have been reviewed. Kolhe (1985) compared
boys and girls urban and rural population on attitude towards mathematics and
indicated significant differences between the attitude of rural and urban
students towards mathematics irrespective of sex. Pal (1989) has considered the
dependence of achievement in mathematics on four variables of the effective
dimension. They were self-concept, anxiety, attitude and academic motivation.
He formulated 56 hypothesis relating to these variables and classification of
students into urban, semi-urban and rural students and male and female
students. Marchis, I. (2011) showed that the most important factor for attitude
towards learning mathematics is the teacher. Also pupils’ beliefs on the
utility of mathematics in their everyday life or the real life influence their
attitude towards studying mathematics. Another two factors that influence
pupils’ attitude are self-efficacy and self-judgment. Chaudhary, Q.A. et al
(2019) determined that majority of the students have a tendency of negative
attitude towards mathematics. Though there are many students who have positive
attitude towards mathematics, but they are less in number. Sharma M. and Rabha
M. (2021) found that the achievement of the students in Mathematics at higher
secondary level depends on the school environment. The achievement level of the
students in private schools is better than the Government schools. The male
students show more positive attitude towards learning Mathematics than the
female students. |
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| Hypothesis | There is no significant difference between school going adolescent boys and girls in relation to their attitude towards mathematics. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Methodology | A sample of 400 students (200 males and 200 females) from 10 schools of district Shamli in Uttar Pradesh was used for the study. The mathematics attitude scale questionnaire was used for data collection, while t-test was used for statistical analysis. |
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| Sampling | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tools Used | For the present investigation, questionnaire developed by Dr. Ali Imam (Associate Professor and Head, Faculty of Education, Integral University, Kursi Road, Lucknow) and Dr. Tahira Khatoon (Associate Professor, Department of Education, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh) was used as a tool. It contained 22 items. There were 11 negative items and 11 positive items. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Analysis | To
investigate the significance of difference between the means, if any, of the
mathematical attitude of school going adolescent boys and girls, the variables
were assessed in terms of their scores in the Mathematical Attitude Scale Test
and the t-test was employed. The analysis of data is presented given
below.
This showed that the t-value
was significant at 0.05 level of significance and not significant at 0.01 level
of significance. It revealed that significant difference exists between mean
scores of Mathematics Attitude Scale test among rural adolescent boys and rural
adolescent girls. Hence the null hypothesis that “There is no significant
difference between school going rural and urban adolescents in relation to
their attitude towards mathematics” was rejected at 0.05 level of significance.  Significance
of the difference between the mean scores of MAS among urban adolescent boys
and urban adolescent girls
Figure 2: Graph showing the difference of mean scores of Mathematics Attitude Scale Test and their standard deviation among urban adolescent boys and urban adolescent girls  Significance
of the difference between the mean scores of MAS among adolescent boys and
girls
Figure 3: Graph showing the difference of mean scores of Scientific Attitude Scale Test and their standard deviation among adolescent boys and adolescent girls 
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| Findings | After applying the statistical methods on collected data, the major findings of the study were as under. 1. The rural adolescent boys were found to have better mathematical attitude than rural adolescent girls. The rural adolescent boys were found to have a positive mathematical attitude than rural adolescent girls. 2. The urban adolescent boys were found to have better mathematical attitude than urban adolescent girls. The urban adolescent boys were found to have a positive mathematical attitude than urban adolescent girls. 3. The mean scores of adolescent boys were higher than adolescent girls. The adolescent boys were found to have a positive mathematical attitude than adolescent girls. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Conclusion | The study in hand was conducted to find out the difference in mathematical attitude of school going adolescent boys and girls. The present study showed that there is significant difference between the mathematical attitude of adolescent boys and girls. The urban boys were found to have higher mathematical attitude to that of urban girls. Similarly the rural boys were found to have higher mathematical attitude to that of rural girls. This shows that significant difference in mathematical attitude exist between boys and girls. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Limitation of the Study | Following were the delimitations of the study 1. The study was delimited to rural and urban areas of only one district i.e. Shamli(U.P.). 2. The study was delimited to 400 school going adolescents. 3. The students were selected from various rural schools and urban schools of Shamli district of Uttar Pradesh. 4. The study was restricted to only one variable i.e. attitude towards mathematics. |
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| References | 1. Chaudhary, Q.A., Malik, M. and Rafiq, N. (2019). Attitude of students towards learning mathematics at elementary level. Journal of Elementary Education, Volume 29, No.1, p.p. 109-120.
2. Kolhe, S.P. (1985). Construction of Attitude scales and measurement of attitude of students of Jalgaon district towards mathematics. In Fourth Survey of Research in Education, New Delhi: NCERT, 702.
3. Marchis I.(2011). Factors that influence secondary school student’s attitude to mathematics. International Conference on Educational Psychology (ICEEPSY 2011), Procedia- Social and Behavioral Sciences. 29(2011) 786-793.
4. Pal, A. (1989). A critical study of some effective outcomes of the students as predictors of their mathematical ability. Ph.D., Education, University of Kalyani.
5. Sharma, M. and Rabha, M. (2021). An investigation on attitude towards learning mathematics among higher secondary school students. Psychology and education, 58(2): 6393-6398 |
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