Mediated Moderation Effects Of Gender, Year Level And Learning Approaches On Attitude, Teaching Efficacy And Mathematics Achievement Of Education Students

Abstract

This study aimed to establish a mediated moderation model by investigating the effects of gender and year level in the relationship between Attitude towards Mathematics, Mathematics teaching efficacy and Mathematics achievement mediated by deep and surface approaches. Participants in this study were 319 second year and third year elementary education students enrolled in the second semester of school year 20132014.
Study have shown that relationship between attitude and mathematics achievement was partially mediated by surface approach while mathematics teaching on mathematics achievement fully mediated by surface and deep approaches. There was a direct relationship between year level and mathematics achievement. This indicated that students on the higher year level tend to have a higher achievement in mathematics. Furthermore, year level interacted positively the effect of mathematics teaching on mathematics achievement. This means that students in the higher year level more likely intensified the effect of mathematics teaching on mathematics achievement while those in the lower level weakened the effect. On the other hand, in the coding of gender, 0 and 1 assigned to female and male respectively, the effect of the interaction of gender and mathematics teaching on mathematics achievement was fully mediated by surface approach. This can be inferred that female intensified the effect of mathematics teaching on surface approach with an effect of surface approach to math achievement is negative. Hence, male education students tend to strengthen the effects of mathematics teaching on mathematics achievement while female education students weakened the effects.
Keywords: Mediated moderation effects, attitude towards mathematics, mathematics teaching efficacy, mathematics achievement, Structural Equation Modeling