The purpose of this study has two phases. In the first phase, a model that explains students&rsquo / mathematics achievement in TIMSS-R will be proposed. In the second phase, the proposed model will be evaluated to interpret the similarities and differences across three culturally and linguistically different countries / Turkey, the Netherlands, and Italy. This study will basically combine students&rsquo / answers on TIMSS-R Students Questionnaire items with their mathematics achievement scores obtained from TIMSS-R Mathematics Achievement Test. In order to achieve this, items in the student questionnaire will be grouped under latent variables and then the related models will be established. Thirty-seven items selected from the TIMSS-R Student Questionnaire were analyzed using principle component factor analysis for each country. The results indicated seven interpretable dimensions. Based on the results&rsquo / of factor analysis of Turkey, the latent variables were generated by selecting the observed variables with highest loadings. These latent variables were / out-of-school activities, socioeconomic status, importance given to math, math classroom
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climate, perception of failure, teacher-centered and student-centered activities. The proposed mathematics achievement model was tested by structural equation modeling for each country separately with the sample of 4772, 2728, and 2781 eighth grade students in Turkey, the Netherlands, and Italy, respectively. In all of the countries perception of failure was the strongest factor explaining the mathematics achievement of the eighth grade students. The other two important factors explaining mathematics achievement were socioeconomic status and student-centered activities for Turkey and Italy / out-of-school activities and importance given to math for the Netherlands. The results indicated that Turkey and Italy have more similar results when compared with the Netherlands. Different than the other countries in Turkey instructional activities formed two separate dimensions such as / teacher-centered and student-centered instructional activities. Since this finding emphasized the important role of teacher in the Turkish education system, it was suggested that more importance should be given to the teacher education.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/4/1260124/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 January 2003 |
| Creators | Yayan, Betul |
| Contributors | Berberoglu, Giray |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
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