Context and Impact of Repetition Courses in Mathematics on Feeling of Competence of Middle School Students in this Subject

As early as middle school, because of real or supposed learning difficulties in mathematics, many students fear them. They even have an aversion to it. As a consequence, bad grades in this subject are recurrent. In an attempt to improve or to see more clearly, many students do not hesitate to call upon teachers of this subject or other subjects for rehearsal classes. In what context do these classes take place? Do they really help to improve the students' feeling of competence in mathematics? To answer these questions, a total of 515 pupils in the 9th grade are mobilized to answer a sociodemographic questionnaire and a scale of feelings of competence in mathematics. The data collected are processed using SPSS 21.0 software with the calculation of percentages to describe the context and Student's t to check the relationship between the variables involved. In the end, the results show that, firstly, mathematics rehearsal classes are provided in the majority of cases by the subject teachers, at the students' homes, on Wednesday afternoons and weekends; secondly, their impact on the feeling of competence in mathematics is proven.