Personal and social factors as predictors of tenth-grade students' enrollment in advanced mathematics courses

This study used the existing database of National Educational Longitudinal Studies: 1988 (NELS: 88) to examine the predictors that are related to high school students' enrollment in advanced mathematics courses. The same variables were also used to examine the predictors on students' enrollment across gender and ethnicity. Finally, the clusters of variables that had the most significant influence on students' enrollment in advanced mathematics courses were investigated. Eighth-grade student data was used to predict tenth-grade enrollment in advanced mathematics courses.

Nine multiple regression analyses were conducted. The first eight regressions used the forward regression method to enter the variables as predictors for course enrollment, and only significant predictors were included in the final multiple regression equation. The final analysis used the hierarchical regression analysis to enter the clusters of variables to evaluate the relative importance of the predictors for course enrollment.

The results indicated that personal, parental, and teacher variables consistently appeared in the list of selected significant predictors for mathematics enrollment across the analyses for the general student population or populations divided by gender or ethnicity. When the variables were entered as four blocks, personal characteristics were found to have the greatest variance explained for the enrollment of advanced mathematics courses. Parental characteristics explained an additional one percent of the variance in mathematics enrollment. Teacher and peer characteristics did not have any significant effect.

The findings of this study provide information to educators, researchers, parents, teachers, and policy makers. The findings indicate that students' decisions on whether to enroll in advanced mathematics courses was primarily dependent on their judgment of their probability of succeeding in the courses and also on their prior enrollment. Therefore, it is necessary to encourage them to take advanced mathematics courses by helping them do well in mathematics courses early in life. Parents have to be made aware of the usefulness of these advanced mathematics courses so that they can influence their children's decision to enroll in such courses. Teachers should be sensitive to the needs of students from different ethnic backgrounds. Limitations and future research are also discussed.