Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to compare the learning attitudes and academic achievement of elementary school students in Hsin-Chu County. It also discusses the influential factors on academic achievement. The study uses the survey of “Questionnaire of Learning Attitude Scale” and the simplified version of the “Attention Deficient Syndrome Scale” as well as students’ report cards to analyze the leaning attitudes and academic achievement of elementary school students, including 499 native Taiwanese and 163 new inhabitants.

The questionnaire data are analyzed by SPSS 18.0 and categorized into two groups of independent variables and dependent variables. The independent variables include gender, the years of preschool education, the nationality of mothers, and the educational levels of mothers. The dependent variables refer to Chinese scores, math scores, and final grades. The study adopts cultural capital, the theory of family educational resources, and family socio-economic status to explore the relationship between elementary school students’ background information and their academic achievement.

The data is analyzed by descriptive statistics, T-test, Pearson product-moment correlation and multiple regression analysis. The results of the study show that there are significant differences in math scores and final grades, and native Taiwanese get better academic achievement than the children of new inhabitants, but no significant differences in Chinese scores, learning attitudes and restlessness between the children of new inhabitants and native Taiwanese. Some influential factors such as lower grade, longer years of preschool education, higher educational levels of parents, higher expectation from parents, approximately 2 hours of time to do homework, better learning attitudes and low score on attention deficient syndrome are observed to contribute to better academic achievement of students in this study.