Abstract:

The success of studies, the success of mathematics studies, is a matter of concern for the individual student, for his or her family, for the higher education institution in which he or she is studying, and for the state. Successful studies have psychological, pedagogical and economic consequences - benefits.
Researches show that there are many factors that contribute to the success of mathematics studies: educational background (Dart, 2019), personality (Levpušček, 2013; Alcock, 2014), socioeconomic situation (Saritas & Akdemir, 2009), parental factors (Levpušček, 2013; Ing, 2014; Saritas & Akdemir, 2009), teaching methods (Albeshree, 2022; Saritas & Akdemir, 2009), motivation and learning styles (Phoong, 2021), class attendance (Yilmaz, 2022), collaborative learning environments and help seeking strategies (Sun et al., 2018), intelligence (Levpušček, 2013), self-efficacy (Sun et al., 2018), self-concept (Chiu & Klassen 2010), mathematics anxiety (Beilock & Maloney, 2015; Juniati & Budayasa, 2020) and others. Factors can be grouped in different ways, depending on the objectives of the study or the factors to be highlighted. Some examples of groupings are: socio-economic; psychological-pedagogical; pre-university and university factors; personality factors (students and teachers); etc.

Important factors in mathematics learning success are psychological (i.e., mathematics self-efficacy, self-concept, mathematics anxiety, learning motivation) and are related to self-perception, which is often formed at a young age, making the growing negative attitude towards mathematics an international challenge for schools and higher education institutions. Data from the TIMSS 2019 International Results in Mathematics and Science has shown that even though students generally have a positive attitude towards mathematics, the percentage of students who do not enjoy learning mathematics is higher in eight grade (41%) compared to fourth grade (20%) (Mullis et al., 2020). Both in these grades, however, liking and feeling confident in mathematics is strongly associated with higher achievement.

The aim of this study is to analyze one of the success factors in mathematics studies – undergraduate students' attitudes towards mathematics and mathematics learning and teaching – in order to identify differences between three groups of students: high performing, moderately performing and poorly performing mathematics learners.

The research methods used were: Views About Mathematics Survey (VAMS) (Carlson, 1997, 1999), analysis of scientific literature, comparative analysis, statistical analysis of data.

The identified differences in attitudes between the groups allow discussion about what kind of pedagogical and psychological measures could be applied to develop the behaviour of successful mathematics students.

Keywords:

Undergraduate, student, mathematics, successful studies, factors, attitudes.