Abstract

• The main purpose of this study is to investigate the factors affecting the student’s interest in mathematics at the middle school level. Especially, this study aims to investigate the teacher factors and student factors that affect students’ interest in mathematics. Quantitative method was used to gather required data. The research method for this study was descriptive research method. Four townships were randomly selected from four districts in Yangon Region. Two high schools and one middle school from each township were selected by using stratified random sampling technique. The subjects in this study consisted of (68) middle school mathematics teachers and (600) Grade Eight students. As instruments, teacher questionnaire, student questionnaire and students’ interest questionnaire were used. For obtaining questionnaire reliability of the pilot test was administered. The internal consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha) of five-point Likert-type of teacher questionnaire was (.721), student questionnaire was (.745) and students’ interest questionnaire was (.834). In order to know the correlation between the factors mentioned above and students’ interest in mathematics, Pearson product-moment correlation was used. According to the results, the correlation between teacher factors and students’ interest in mathematics was (r = .778, p< .01) and the correlation between student factors and their interest in mathematics was (r = .565, p < .01). These results showed that teacher factors and student factors were positively correlated with students’ interest in mathematics.