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

Over the past decades, researchers have explored the relationship among home resources, school environment, and students’ mathematics achievement in a large amount of studies (Coleman, 1966; Greenwald, Hedges & Laine, 1996; Hampden-Thompson & Johnston, 2006; Mullis et al., 2012). 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 schoollevel differences. It attempts to answer three research questions: 1) How much of the total variance in mathematics achievement of eighth graders in Taiwan have been accounted for student and school-level variance? 2) How much of the student-level variance in mathematics achievement of eighth graders in Taiwan was associated with parents’ education level and home educational possessions? 3) How much of the school-level variance in mathematics achievement of eighth graders in Taiwan was associated with students’ economic background of school, school location, and school instructional resources? The results, hopefully, will provide some means to help parents, educators, and policy makers in Taiwan improve students’ math achievement and narrow the achievement gap among schools.