Abstract
The performance on mathematics of secondary school graduates are observantly poorer. A significant number of secondary school students have experienced severe mathematical anxiety, which affects their performance on mathematics, leading students to give up prematurely when encountering mathematical setbacks. In this thesis, we use the “Taiwan Education Panel Survey” data base as the primary dataset, and a secondary dataset targeting middle schoolers. We research the impact of three aspects, which are peer effect, homeroom teachers’ participation, and parental accompany, on secondary school students’ mathematics performance, in order to understand further how to improve students’ achievement in mathematics. We have found that, on average, peer effect improves the performance of mathematical learning the most, followed by homeroom teachers’ participation. The effect of parental accompany is not as evident as that of the others. Although the effects of these three aspects are different in their strength, each of these aspects has its own factors that can improve students’ performance on mathematics. Hence, if we can make the most of the effects of those aspects altogether, and gradually diminish students’ fear of mathematics, we anticipate that the secondary school students’ performance on mathematics will be improved substantially.