Classifiers of Students’ Mathematical Anxiety According to PISA 2012 Turkey Data

Abstract

The study aims to find out the variables related to the assignation of the groups that have
anxiety for mathematics and those who do not according to the findings of PISA 2012 Turkey student
questionnaire. B form of PISA 2012 Student Questionnaire was used in the study. The sample of the
study consisted of 1598 students who completed the form. Discriminant function analysis was used to
define classification success. The hypotheses of discriminant analysis were tested by considering 57
index/variables and the variables corresponding with the basic assumptions were included in the
further analysis. As the main results of this study that there were four statistically significant
characteristics or variables to classify for students’ math anxiety. These characteristics are (1)
disciplinary climate, (2) teacher support, (3) math teacher support and (4) teacher behaviour: formative
assessment. In this context, it has been observed that discriminant function accomplished the
classification 64,0% correctly, which indicates a true classification beyond chance by the function