A Case Study about Beliefs and Attitudes in Mathematical Problem Solving among the Higher Secondary Students in Nagaon District of Assam: India

Abstract

This paper endeavorto study about Beliefs and attitudes on Mathematical Problem Solving, a case study on 858 (498 male and 360 female), Higher Secondary levels of scienceas well as artsbehavioral standard of students are being selected as the sample data for consideration. There is about 34 different subject related educational and beliefs Standard Questionnaire which are first time administered to our students and the subject or items reliability (cronbach’s alpha) is 0.87. It is also given emphasisto learn their beliefs about six domains on mathematical problem solving which are identified as important of understanding, predetermine sequence of steps, time consuming math’s problems, have several ways of solutions; kind of Mathematics Instruction and usage of technologic equipment’s. There are 18 positively and 16 negatively stated subject or items which are included to each domain on mathematical problem solving. The study revealed that the beliefs more than half of the students on mathematical problem solving followed in the direction of strongly agreements on positive statements and not agree on the negative statements to all other domain besides beliefs about following predetermine sequence of steps. For this statements the belief of the students are going agreement on negative statements but the positive statements are not belief.