The Role of Students’ Beliefs, Parents' Educational Level, and The Mediating Role of Attitude and Motivation in Students’ Mathematics Achievement

Abstract

Investigating factors affecting students’ academic performance seems a hard job for researchers on the empirical front. Beliefs, parents' educational background, motivation, and attitudes have been proven significantly influence achievement. However, concurrent research on the relationship among these variables seems scarce. Therefore, to contribute to this gap in knowledge, the purpose of this study is to examine the structural relationships among beliefs, parents' educational level, attitude, motivation, and achievement in mathematics learning. We selected 30 classes randomly from six schools in Surabaya, Indonesia. This study involved 894 fifth- and sixth-grade students (448 boys and 446 girls). Structural equation modeling results showed that this model predicts students’ achievement in mathematics (R2 = 0.49). Beliefs are positively associated with students’ achievement (β = 0.20, p < 0.001), attitude (β = 0.82, p < 0.001), and motivation (β = 0.68, p < 0.001). Parents' educational level is positively associated with achievements (β = 0.17, p < 0.001) and motivation (β = 0.07, p = 0.04). Beliefs were indirectly associated with achievements through attitude (β = 0.31, p < 0.001) and motivation (β = 0.08, p = 0.01). The indirect association between parents' educational level and achievement through motivation was insignificant. This study is valuable because it helps unpack the relationship between beliefs, parents' educational level, attitudes, motivation, and achievement.