Investigation of factors affecting secondary school students 'mathematic oriented academic risk behavior by structural equality modeling

The aim of this study is to determine the effects on behavior level of middle school students' gender, grade levels, attitude towards mathematics (ATM) levels and mathematical metacognition awareness (MMA) levels on each other and on mathematics-oriented academic risk-taking (MOART). The target universe of the study is the secondary schools in Malatya province and the accessible universe is the secondary schools in Battalgazi and Yeşilyurt central districts of Malatya. The sample of the study consists of 895 middle school (6, 7 and 8th grade) students selected from the schools in the accessible universe in the 2018-2019 academic year by using the appropriate sampling method. In the research, MMA Scale, ATM Scale and MOART Scale were used as data collection tools. The data obtained in the research using the relational research model was analyzed by Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). As a result of SEM analysis, 4 of 9 hypotheses developed based on theoretical information within the scope of the research were accepted and 5 of them were rejected. As a result of the research, it is observed that there are direct and indirect relations between gender, ATM, MMA and MOART. It has been seen that Gender variable affects the MMA level directly, the MOART level indirectly. While the ATM level affects the MMA level directly, it affects the MOART level directly and indirectly. In addition, it has been obtained that the MMA level affects the MOARA level directly. The gender variable and ATM explain about 49% of the MMA variance. In addition, ATM and MMA explain about 68% of the MOART variance. Various suggestions were made depending on the results obtained from the research. Keywords: Academic risk taking, Metacognition awareness, Attitude, Gender, Grade level, Structural equation modeling