Effects of Home Resources and School Environment on Eighth-Grade Mathematics Achievement in Taiwan

Abstract

Over the past decades, researchers have explored the relationship among home resources, school environment, and students' mathematics achievement in a large amount of studies. Many of them suggested that rich home resources for learning were related to higher average academic achievement. Some also suggested that the home background was closely associated with the learning environment, and therefore, influenced students' achievements. Thus, this study hypothesized that students who own more home resources would perform better than students who possess fewer resources and that schools that have more socioeconomically advantaged students, located in high-income neighborhoods, and possess more instructional resources would have better mathematics performance. The study focuses on eighth graders in Taiwan and explores the variance in mathematics achievement of students as a function of student and school level differences.