High School Achievement and Motivation as Antecedents of College Freshmen’s Achievement in Basic Mathematics

The purpose of this study was to evaluate basic mathematics achievement among college freshmen in Northern Quezon and to determine the relationships existing between high school achievement variables, motivation variables, and basic math achievement. The study employed 92 respondents randomly selected from two collegiate institutions in Infanta, Quezon. Some common descriptive statistics, as well as Pearson r and multiple regression, were used in the data analysis. The key findings were (1) The basic mathematics achievement of the college freshmen is very poor, (2) The beliefs in the usefulness of math of the college freshmen are high, while their interest in math is only moderately high. Their most important attribution of success in math is effort, and their most important attribution of failure in math is lack of effort; (3) All the high school achievements (selected subject grades and averages) are positively related to basic math achievement; (4) Of the motivation variables, only interest in mathematics has significant positive relationship with basic math achievement; (5) There exist at least moderately high, positive relationships among high school math, science, and English grades. Also, taking all the high school achievements and motivation variables together, regression model shows that a moderate amount of variation in the basic mathematics achievement of the college freshmen can be explained by the variation in the mentioned dependent variables. The results of the study have implications in improving teaching math in high school and also in improving student selection for math-related college programs. The study recommends for future researchers to explore other variables - such as the college entrance examination - in future studies in order to fine-tune student selection process, especially in countryside collegiate institutions. Also, the study recommends for other educational researchers to explore the issue of mass promotion in the educational system.