ACADEMIC SELF-CONCEPT, LEARNING STRATEGIES AND PROBLEM SOLVING ACHIEVEMENT OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

This study investigated the level of academic self–concept of sophomore university students, assessed their extent of use of learning strategies as moderating variables on their math achievement specifically in problem solving. It also examined the association between the level of academic self-concept and problem–solving achievement in mathematics of the students’ respondents. Descriptive correlational design was employed in the conduct of the study with 240 students’ respondents randomly chosen as representative samples. A partial correlation was used to measures academic self-concept effect to students’ accomplishment. Findings revealed that academic self–concept of students in mathematics is moderate. This suggests that higher self–concept in academics and extent of utilisation of learning strategies in solving mathematical problems would result to a high problem–solving achievement. In addition, problem solving achievement was partially moderated through learning strategies. As the students extensively used the learning approach, the more that they were confident in dealing word problems in mathematics. The higher the extent of use of the strategies, the higher the problem solving achievement will be incurred by the students. In conclusion, the students did not attain high level of problem solving achievement due to less interest in reading and solving numeric and word problems in math. This development showed that student’s high problem solving achievement requires high level of self – concept with consistent use of learning techniques. The development of interesting, challenging problems and exercises in mathematics courses (or subjects) is hereby recommended with enhanced classroom-based problem solving activities conducive to the improvement of academic self–concept and learning strategies