Students' Affective Responses to Mathematics: Secondary School Results from National Assessment.

Desired outcomes of instruction in school mathematics usually include some mention of achievement in mathematics and positive affective responses to the sub ject matter. Not only do we want our stu dents to develop some expertise in mathe matics, we are also interested in promoting their feelings of success and encouraging them to pursue their study of mathematics. As an example of this latter type of goal, one of the objectives of the first mathe matics assessment of the National Assess ment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was that students learn to "appreciate" mathe matics, where appreciation included both enjoyment of the subject and respect for its utility (NAEP 1970). Many teachers appear to be sensitive to their students' attitudes toward mathematics. To gain information about students' affective responses to mathematics, the second NAEP mathe matics assessment included a number of exercises designed to assess students' atti tudes toward the subject and their per ceptions of different aspects of mathematics learning. Other large-scale efforts to determine students' attitudes toward mathematics have been made; most notable among these are the attitude inventory included in the National Longitudinal Study of Mathemat ical Abilities (Romberg and Wilson 1969) and the attitude scales included in th? first international study of mathematics achievement, as described by Husen (1967). The attitude exercises included in the NAEP mathematics assessment repre sented a somewhat different approach from that of other large-scale investigations in that no effort was made to form item scales.