Beliefs about mathematics and mathematics education of Ecuadorian students of grades 8 to 10

The investigation reported in this article aims at analyzing and describing the mathematics-related beliefs of Ecuadorian students of grades 8 to 10 of “Educacion General Basica”. Embedded in related research carried out in several parts of Europe over the past two decades, an adapted version of the Mathematics-Related Beliefs Questionnaire (MRBQ) was administered in Zone 6 of Ecuador to a representative sample of 447 students belonging to 15 schools: 150 of grades 8 and 9, and 147 of grade 10; 60% boys and 40% girls; 9 urban and 6 rural schools. A short questionnaire “Ensenar Matematicas” (“Teaching Mathematics”) was also applied to the mathematics teachers of the participating classes. A principal component analysis resulted in a four-factor solution accounting for 46.8 % of the variance. Three of the four factors converge with those found in previous studies in Europe. The scores on the four factors of the total sample and the different subsamples tend to coincide with the neutrality score on the Likert-scale. A MANOVA on the data resulted in a main effect of grades and location (urban vs rural), and an interaction effect grade x sex. Whereas no significant difference were found between the boys of the three grades, there were several differences between the grades of the girls. However, no main effect for sex was observed indicating that overall boys’ and girls’ math-related beliefs do not differ and tend to neutrality: neither negative but also not really positive.status: publishe