Abstract:

The research is aimed at monitoring the influence of gender and age on the pupil's relationship to mathematics. A tool consisting of twelve items was used to investigate the pupil's relationship to mathematics. It is a classic type instrument based on the Likert scaling from 1 to 7 (7 point Likert scale). The tool itself is described in detail in the paper, including its processing. A total number of 283 pupils divided by gender (boys - girls) and age (10 years - 11 years -12 years) participated in the survey. Pupils at the age of 12 are much more motivated to mathematics than the group of 10-year-olds and 11-year-olds. In the case of the later groups, the medians are almost equal as well as the interquartile range. The only difference is the maximum for both files. There are significant differences only at the 10% level of significance. Pupil's motivation to mathematics is the same for boys and girls. Thus, the results show that there is no difference in motivation between girls and boys, which corresponds to Chvála (2013) who states that many authors concur in that pupils are equally motivated when entering school regardless of gender.

Keywords:

Age, gender, motivation, pupil's relationship to mathematics.