ABSTRACT
In the 1960s, research on affect typically focused on the relationship between students’ attitudes toward mathematics and their achievement in mathematics (for a review see Aiken, 1970, 1976). Most of these studies were carried out separately from research on mathematics learning by researchers in differential and social psychology; they used a psychometric approach and the main datacollection technique consisted of administering questionnaires to large groups of students (McLeod, 1994). Only small effects were found (correlations ranging from .20 to .40), and meta-analyses, including also more recent studies in this tradition, emphasize that a more differentiated perspective on the relation between attitudes and achievement in mathematics is necessary, taking into account such variables as, for example, gender, grade level, and ethnic background (e.g., Ma & Kishor, 1997). A major criticism of these older studies was also that they lacked a strong theoretical foundation (McLeod, 1992).
