THE DEVELOPMENT AND THE EVALUATION OF A DIAGNOSTIC MATHEMATICS PRETEST FOR CHEMISTRY AND OF A PROGRAM TO STRENGTHEN MATHEMATICS PROFICIENCIES FOR CHEMISTRY STUDENTS

Students who are competent in mathematics are more apt to achieve successfully in chemistry. Many beginning chemistry students have difficulty mastering chemistry concepts because of deficiencies in mathematics skills. The problem of this study was to develop and to evaluate a diagnostic mathematics pretest for chemistry and a remedial program to strengthen mathematics proficiencies for beginning high-school chemistry students.;The study was conducted over a period of two academic years, involving 126 students from 9 CHEM Study classes with 2 teachers at 2 high schools in Burlington County, New Jersey. At the start of the experiment, all students were tested for cognitive development, attitude toward science, and mathematics ability. The students were posttested after one semester for mathematics achievement, chemistry achievement, and attitude toward science. A quasi-experimental research design using non-parametric statistics was used to analyze the data.;The results were analyzed using the Spearman Correlation by Ranks and the Friedman Two-Way ANOVA. Cognitive development and sex were used as grouping variables. Sex was one dimension of the ANOVA, with chemistry achievement, mathematics achievement, and attitude toward science the other dimension, respectively.;The results showed that the developed Chemistry Mathematics Pretest (CMP) was both reliable and valid. The remedial program had no significant effect on chemistry achievement. However, mathematics achievement was significantly improved for the females in the experimental group, while the attitude of the males in the experimental group decreased.;The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the developed remedial mathematics program on chemistry achievement, mathematics achievement, and attitude toward science of beginning high-school chemistry students.