University students’ logical thinking in the light of success and perceived difficulty
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Andrea Bordás
[1]
;
Edith Debrenti
[1]
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[1] Partium Christian University
Partium Christian University
Rumanía
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- Localización: International journal of mathematical education in science and technology, ISSN 0020-739X, Vol. 56, Nº. 8, 2025, págs. 1554-1566
- Idioma: inglés
- DOI: 10.1080/0020739X.2025.2514102
- Enlaces
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Resumen
The perceived difficulty of a task is essential for recognising problems, adjusting effort, acknowledging the need for assistance or employing strategies and can be subjective in nature. Task difficulty has an activating, resource-mobilising effect on performing the task. We conducted a conceptual replication study with 246 university students, partly replicating two studies about tasks focused on selected elements of propositional logic and raising new questions. The focus of our study differs from the previous ones, as it specifically examines the relationship between performance and perceived task difficulty. We also investigate how gender or the students' field of study influences the performance in the knowledge test and the perception of these tasks' difficulty. We found that the field of study partly explains our results: students from STEM fields perceived the tasks involving logical operations to be easier than those from pedagogical studies, although the performance of the students in teacher training is not inferior, and in fact is often better. The results reflect the negative attitudes of female students towards STEM. Only in the STEM contexts do female students find the tasks significantly more difficult, although, in the physics and chemistry contexts, they perform even better than male students.
