Cross-National Comparisons of Student Motivation and School Contexts

The goals of this study were as follows: 1) application of quantitative methods to large-scale databases, 2) investigation of relationships between student mathematics achievement and student motivational attitudes for learning mathematics at the macro level (i.e., national level) and at the micro level (i.e., student level), 3) examination of the pattern of the cultural factors (i.e., student motivational attitudes for learning mathematics)among nations, 4) examination of the percentage of the school level in explaining total student mathematics achievement variance within the country, and 5) investigation of the relationships of student- and school-level factors associated with student mathematics achievement within the country. This study should be useful for researchers interested in using large-scale databases and quantitative methods to conduct cross-national studies, especially on the relationship between student achievement and attitude towards learning.