The development of affective subscales to reflect variation in students' experiences of studying mathematics in higher education

The focus of this paper is on the isolation and modelling of a set of affec tive sources of variation in student learning that seem specific to the dis cipline of mathematics. Such affective sources contribute to developing a m ore comprehensive discipline-specific model of student learning that can pr ovide information about individual students, and the context of their learn ing engagement, in terms that are sufficiently specific for counselling and other forms of teacher-based interventions. The first part of the paper de scribes the development of conceptually discrete subscales to represent the se sources of variation, and their associated psychometric properties. Thes e subscales constitute the Experiences of Studying Mathematics Inventory (E SMI). The second part describes a field trialling of the ESMI subscales to test their sensitivity to influences and learning outcomes within a particu lar context of first year mathematics studies.