University students' views towards mathematics

Mathematics essentially provides the basic skills for human resources. Additionally, it sets the foundation for further education. In this realization, this research investigates the students' views towards mathematics by gender and academic aspiration. In doing so, seventy-eight M Phil students of the school of social sciences and education at Nepal Open University, Nepal were chosen as the participants. The views score was based on 40 items of views towards mathematics questionnaires which was used in the academic year 2020 along with students' gender and academic field they were attending. As a statistical tool, a descriptive and inferential analysis was employed to examine the relationship between students' views with respect to gender and academic aspiration. The findings revealed that the students' views towards mathematics were slightly positive (mean score 134.01 with std dev 13.60 out of 200). However, male students scored slightly higher than their female counterparts. There were significant differences of views scores by academic groups. Bringing these findings together into account, this study will help other researchers, teachers, students, and administrators to gain a better understanding on students' views on mathematics.