Trend in Researches on Mathematics Achievement

The quality of teaching and learning mathematics has been one of the major challenges and concerns of educators. If we consider a group of students, a few students are found to be high achievers on the one hand and a few are low achievers on the other. The question arises why such a difference in achievement appears? Is this difference due to certain factors? or Is there any single factor or host of factors which account for all the differences in mathematics achievement ? These questions often appear in the minds of the Educators, Educationists and the Psychologists, but with hardly satisfactory answers. In this paper a comprehensive review of the related literature is done to identify the factors affecting the mathematics achievement of students. Review of the related literature reflect that the most preferential variables is in psychological category are Intelligence, Attitude towards Mathematics, Self-concept, Numerical Ability and Math Anxiety; among Social variables the variables which were considered very widely are Socio-economic Status, Parental Involvement & Parents Education and among Biographical variables most frequently considered variable is Sex.