A study on mathematics and geometry attitude scale byexploratory factor analysis and clustering analysis

In recent years, studies on how to increase the interest of students in mathematics and geometry lessons have gained importance. Since academic achievement in mathematics and geometry lessons will also affect the future lives of students, attitudes of students to these lessons are very important. In addition, factor analysis and clustering analysis, which are multivariate statistical methods, have gained interest in applied mathematics in recent years. The aim of this study is to investigate students' attitudes towards mathematics and geometry lessons by using exploratory factor analysis and clustering analysis methods. In addition, the results of the exploratory factor analysis and cluster analysis are examined comparatively. The universe of the study consists of students from 8 different high schools who accept students by address based placement system in 6 different districts of Antalya in 2018-2019 academic year. The sample of the study consists of 1320 10th, 11th, 12th grade students who were selected by appropriate sampling method. The attitude scale of mathematics lesson developed by A¸skar (1986) and the attitude scale for geometry lesson developed by Cansız Akta¸s and Akta¸s (2013) were used to determine the attitudes of high school students participating in the research towards mathematics and geometry lessons. SPSS 23 package program was used for data analysis. As a result of factor analysis for mathematics attitude scale, two different factors called interest and attitude were obtained. Four different factors named as self-confidence, anxiety, usefulness and materiality were obtained for the geometry attitude scale. In the classification of attitudes of high school students towards mathematics and geometry lessons, exploratory factor analysis and clustering analysis methods gave similar results.