• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.143-151
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• 2017

An increasing number of students are giving up on learning mathematics at all grade levels, including elementary school. The study in this paper considers seven non-cognitive student characteristics to identify which are strongly correlated with giving up on mathematics at the elementary school level. Data were collected with a survey on the non-cognitive domain of mathematics learning that was developed by the Korea Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Creativity in 2015. The data were collected from 3,636 elementary school students in Korea, and we analyzed the data using the statistical computing program R. Of the seven components, efficacy and interest have a strong correlation with students' tendency to profess that they have given up trying to learn mathematics. The findings of the study shed light on which non-cognitive domain areas mathematics teachers need to pay more attention to in order to make their teaching effective. This study further investigated the correlation between responses to each of the 24 survey items and students' claim that they have given up on mathematics. Using the 8 items with the highest correlations, we have developed a shorter, 8-item version of the survey, which will be useful for similar future studies.