The Relationships Between Students’ Underachievement in Mathematics Courses and Influencing Factors

The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors influencing the course marks of underachieved Mathematics courses and examine their relationships. As international research studies have also reported some underachievement in Mathematics, there is a strong need to investigate on the influencing factors contributed to the underachievement in Mathematics education. The instruments of this study consisted of the questionnaire on lecturers’ opinions, the report on final examination analysis and students’ particulars as noted in the registration database. The respondents consisted of 1050 full-time students from a public university in Sarawak, Malaysia. From the findings, Pre-Calculus, Calculus I, Mathematics II and Engineering Mathematics I were categorised as underachieved Mathematics courses. SPM Additional Mathematics had the strongest impact on Pre-Calculus, and it was also a good predictor of the course marks of underachieved Mathematics courses. Class size had significant influence on Pre-Calculus but not the other Mathematics courses. Gender played a significant role in determining the underachieved Mathematics course marks. Further, it was also discovered that female students outperformed male students in all the investigated courses. This study concluded with some recommendations to improve the current Mathematics learning situation.