Students' Flow Experience In Primary Math Class And Its Influence On Math Performance

Flow experience was thought to be one of the most important positive human sub-experiences in positive psychology.But there are few studies about flow in math education For now.What about students' Flow experience when learning math? Does students' Flow experience in math classroom have an influence on students' math performance? This is still unknown.Exploring students' Flow experience in math classroom would be helpful to understand students' math learning process and performance from the view of positive psychology.And it also would be helpful to improve students' Flow experience in the future.So,this study mainly focus on two problems.The first is what about students' Flow experience when learning math.The second is if students' Flow experience in math classroom has an influence on students' math performance.But to solve these two problems have to based on that there is a tool to measure Flow experience in math classroom while there was no such one worldwide for now.The the first task of this study was to develop the right tool that could be used in Chinese math classrooms to measure students' Flow experience.Totally,three core parts were included in this study: the development and validation of the tool;the investigation of students' Flow experience in China;the influence of Flow experience on students' math performance.The development and validation of the scale to measure Flow was in pre-study period.Based on the Flow State Scale(FSS)developed by Jackson and Marsh(1996),through the process of mathematical revision?translation?back translation and culture adjustment,we got the original Math Flow State Scale(MFSS)with thirty-six items.In first time scale test we used the method of Exploratory Factor Analysis(EFA)to analyse the date.After scale test I twenty-six items were kept while ten items were deleted.Based on that we used Confirmatory Factor Analysis method to deal with the data in the second time scale test which was called scale test II.With the results of scale test II,we tested the one factor model?nine factor model and eight factor model of MFSS respectively and we found the eight factor model suited the date best.Finally,we got the MFSS with twenty-four items and eight factors that could be used in Chinese primary math classrooms to test students' Flow experience.And the MFSS also have good reliability and validity in main study.Trough the investigation of X,Y,and Z schools from three cities,and provinces in China we concludes that the status of the Flow experience were as follows:(1)Students' Flow experience in math classes increases with the growth of grades;(2)Flow experience of students had increased with the growth of education and economic resources;(3)Enjoyment experience and the disappearance of self-consciousness in the specific dimensions were the opposite;(4)Flow experience of male students in math classes were higher than that of female students;Put the performance of students problem solving as students' math performance.The correlation and regression analysis was used to analyze the influence of the students' Flow experience on math performance.It was found that:(1)On the whole,students' Flow experience in math classroom could predict students' math performance;(2)Students' Flow experience could positively influence students' math performance.This relationship was moderated by gender?schools and grades.The revision and validation of the Flow experience measurement tool ? the investigation and the confirmation of the predictive effect of the Flow experience on math performance would be beneficial for teachers and researchers to change their thoughts and make changes that point to positive mathematical education.Therefore,in order to construct the optimal mathematics classroom environment in which the Flow experience occurs and improve students' Flow experience in math classroom,the following five suggestions are proposed:(1)Pay attention to the positive influence that students' flow experience on math learning;(2)Build optimal math class environment to improve students' flow experience based on the flow experience theory;(3)Turn to math teaching strategies that have gender difference to improve girls' flow experience in math class;(4)Improve students' self-regulated learning ability to experience flow;(5)Lead to the balance development of education in different economical areas through deepen the education innovation.