Curiosity, Motivation, Attitude, Gender, and Mathematics Performance

Abstract

This study sought to determine the curiosity, motivation, and attitudes of fourth year students of a government-owned secondary school in Bulacan in relation to their performance in Mathematics. It utilized the descriptive-correlation method of research. It was revealed by the randomly selected 321 Grade 10 respondents that in terms of curiosity, they felt that they have the ability to seek out opportunities to challenge themselves and grow as a person resulting in higher motivation and higher effect on mathematical performance. Motivation directly affected the respondents' perception about performance while attitude contributed a lot to performance in mathematics. Furthermore, the male students differed from their female counterparts in their mathematical performance. Female students were more curious, motivated, and have positive attitude towards mathematics than the males. However, there was no significant difference between the means of the male and females in all the variables. The study also showed that motivation is a significant predictor of mathematics performance.