It has been suggested that males perform better than females in mathematics after ninth grade because more males than females enroll in advanced mathematics courses in high school. However, factors other than enrollment may be involved. Therefore, this study investigated whether the performance of males (B=500) and females (N=500) was different in…

Analysis of two studies related to academic achievement (Atkinson, Lens, and O'Malley, 1976; Entwisle and Hayduk, 1978) and of the effective-schools literature provides a picture that helps us to understand why the ability of poor children is not reflected in their school performance and what schools might do to remedy this situation. The…

Theories of school learning consistently point to variables such as ability, time (e.g., homework), quality of instruction, motivation, and academic coursework as important influences on learning. In this study, path analysis was used to test the direct and indirect effects of these variables on high school learning, with learning measured by both…

This study focused on the career choice dynamics of college students by examining sex differences in self-efficacy toward occupations that were perceived by the subjects as traditionally male- or female-oriented. The usefulness of self-efficacy as a predictor of career choice and the relationships between careers considered, efficacy beliefs about…

The present study was an attempt to investigate the effects of two factors - number of defining attributes and the degree to which a student has learned those attributes (level of conceptualization) - on the difficulty of a concept. (Author)

In this paper, a theory of the academic achievement process of learning is proposed. Learning is seen as the outcome of the utilization of learning opportunities created in the teaching process by students themselves. These students are characterized by a certain level of ability and effort. The theory is first formulated in a single equation…

The major purposes of the study were to determine (1) the extent to which students receiving College Level Examination Program (CLEP) credit in mathematics pursue courses in the disciplines, (2) their achievement in advanced mathematics courses compared to other students of similar academic ability, and (3) the potential loss of course credit…

The purposes of this study were to investigate the validity of a self-estimated persistence measure as a predictor of academic achievement and to study whether persistence interacted with instructional method. It was hypothesized that a moderate amount of persistence--neither too much nor too little--would lead to the highest achievement, forming…

Review findings about aspirations and socio-economic status in Canada, explores the possibility of identifying disadvantaged groups and bringing about greater equality of educational opportunity, and suggests that egalitarians must look beyond the educational system to help remove some of the factors which educationally disadvantage the socially…

Reports an experimental effort to determine the validity of the proposition in deviance theory which holds that to label a person is to produce a change in the expectancies one holds for his performance. (Author/DEP)

An analysis of three issues concerning the possibility that sex differences in causal attributional patterns may be important mediators of sex differences in persistence in one's mathematics education are addressed. These issues include: (1) the exact nature of the sex differences in attributional patterns for school achievement and the…

A common practice in the field of learning disabilities is analysis of ability-achievement discrepancies. The reliability of such difference scores is an important statistic in such decision making. In the study, selected ability and achievement devices were administered to a sample of 99 fourth grade low achievers (half of whom were identified as…

Some of the determinants of the decision to take or not to take mathematics are explored. The focus is on sex and grade differences in responses to questions about mathematics. The results show that fifth- and sixth-grade girls tended to have higher expectancies for success as well as higher ratings of their ability in mathematics than the boys…