A study on the relationship between attitudes, gender and performance in exercises and problems involving fractions

Abstract

The present study research investigated relations between the performance in the solution of problems and exercises about fractions and variables such as: the attitudes in relation to mathematics, the attitudes in relation to fractions, the genre and the grade. 95 students of High School from a public school participated in the research. The instruments used were: scale of attitudes in relation to mathematics and in relation to fractions and three mathematical test: of algorithm, of conceptual and involving problems. The results indicated that the strongest correlations were between the marks in the test of algorithm and of the, between the scales of attitudes in relation to mathematics and in relation to fraction and in smaller degree, between the mark of the problems and the scale of fractions. In relation to the genre, no significant differences were found. Also, it was observed that the general performance tends to increase according to the grade, in contrast of what happens to the attitudes in relation to mathematics.