| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 科學教育研究所 === 95 === Investigated were the mathematics achievement(MA) of the eighth graders both from regular family and Children’s Home(CH), and factors which might relate to the MA differences between two groups. Thirty-nine children from CH and 323 students from ten junior high school were purposively sampled from Taipei City, Taipei County, Taoyuan County, Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County. Mathematics achievement test was constructed from the released TIMSS 2003 test items. The test had been evaluated by the content experts. Its reliability (K-R20) was .92. Variables which related to MA were selected from TIMSS 2003 students’ questionnaire, and had been evaluated by the experts. The reliability (Cronbach’s α) was .75. Data were analyzed through frequencies, Pearson correlations, two sample independent t-test and stepwise multiple regression.
Results indicated that 1)the MA of the students from CH did significantly inferior to those from regular family; 2)students from the CH in Taipei were adapted to the institutions earlier and the duration staying in institutions were longer than other districts. The number of members in a family unit in institutions of Taipei was closed to the regular family, children in Taipei got better care; 3)the CH in Hsinchu County had good reputation, and there were plenty of volunteers and social resources to help students. Data indicated that their children’s MA were significantly higher than the students in the regular family(P＜.05). Result showed that when children in CH received good care, they could achieved as well as the regular children; 4)students in CH had some characteristics as follows: low self-confidence and low valuing in learning mathematics; less attention to learning activities in mathematics classes; the highest expectation for education of most children was to finish secondary schools; expectation for studying time at night less than two hours; 5)the strongest predictor of MA of CH students was “the number of volunteers to help them learn mathematics”, and it explained 30% of MA variances, totally 43% MA variances was explained by all predictors; The strongest predictor of regular family children was “the number of books at home”, and it explained 22% MA variances, 55% MA variances was explained totally by all predictors.
Recommendations were as following: 1)more funds and resources should be offered to inferior areas’ institutions; 2)more volunteers to help students from CH improve their MA and self-confidence; 3)further studies to understand the difficulties in learning mathematics of students from CH.
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