Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education (SHBIE)

The cross-sectional field survey examined the roles of mathematics anxiety, self-esteem, proactive coping, and test stress in mathematics achievement among 204 (151 females) randomly selected Year 8-10 Brunei secondary school students. The negative dimensions of mathematics anxiety, self-esteem, and proactive coping correlated negatively with mathematics achievement and were both poor predictors of and barriers to mathematics achievement. Both test stress components (intrusive and avoidance) also related negatively with mathematics grades and were poor predictors of mathematics achievement. In addition, females scored significantly higher on negative self-esteem and intrusive stress variables than males. Furthermore, mathematically less able students scored significantly higher on the negative mathematics anxiety and negative self-esteem domains than more able peers. Moreover, positive proactive coping was a good predictor of mathematics achievement. Overall, the findings have practical significance indicating psychological areas where attention, counselling efforts and educational interventions need to be directed to help the at-risk and vulnerable students.

Educational system reform is generally observed to bring change to the school and students’ performance. After 5 years of its implementation, this study attempts to have an overview of schools from three different groups based on their students’ mathematics achievements. This is done by identifying the factors that may have contributed to the students’ low, medium and high achieving performances in mathematics in three case studies primary schools in Brunei Darussalam. The data were collected through lesson observations, interviews with the principals and the teachers, and field notes. The roles of the principals, teachers and parents were found to have significant factors, both enabling and constraining towards the students’ performances.

This research was conducted at 15 religious schools in Tutong District. The objectives of this research are to identify leadearship style and its relationship to academic achievement. The “Leader Behaviour Description Questionnaire” (LBDQ) formed by Halpin (1966) was used. Meanwhile Academic achievement was measured using the “School Certificate Examination Results, Religious Primary School (SSSRU) from 2008-2011. A total of 191 teachers and 15 headmasters from religious school in Tutong District were randomly chosen. Pearson correlation was used to analyse the data. To support data obtained from questionnaire given 10 teachers were interviewed . The results showed that most of the school leaders adopt a democratic style of leadership. There was a significant correlation between the structure of task-oriented leadership style and students’ performance in the examinations. Correlation analysis also showed that headmasters practice task- oriented structure and consideration-oriented structure in relation to their work responsiblities. Furthermore, findings also showed that majority of the headmasters are more likely to practice consideration-oriented leadership style compared to structure-oriented leadership style.