The development of affective subscales to reflect variation in students' experiences of studying mathematics in higher education

The focus of this paper is on the isolation and modelling of a set of affective sources of variation in student learning that seem specific to the discipline of mathematics. Such affective sources contribute to developing a more comprehensive discipline-specific model of student learning that can provide information about individual students, and the context of their learning engagement, in terms that are sufficiently specific for counselling and other forms of teacher-based interventions. The first part of the paper describes the development of conceptually discrete subscales to represent these sources of variation, and their associated psychometric properties. These subscales constitute the Experiences of Studying Mathematics Inventory (ESMI). The second part describes a field trialling of the ESMI subscales to test their sensitivity to influences and learning outcomes within a particular context of first year mathematics studies.