Beyond personality traits: a motivation-self-regulation model of mathematical problem-solving through self-efficacy...

This study aims to understand how learning-related traits and process variables collectively influence high school students' mathematical problem-solving ability; and to verify the mediating roles of mathematical self-efficacy and mathematical thinking.

Based on questionnaire and mathematical performance test data from 1,183 high school students in Shanghai, the study employs partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) for analysis.

The results show that the model has high explanatory power for mathematical self-efficacy, mathematical thinking, and mathematical problem-solving ability; motivation to math and self-regulated learning are core upstream predictors of problem-solving performance, while mathematical self-efficacy and mathematical thinking serve as the closest direct predictors of problem-solving and significantly mediate the effects of motivation and self-regulated learning on problem-solving ability. In contrast, personality traits exhibit relatively weak direct and mediating effects after controlling for prior academic performance and the aforementioned learning variables.

The contribution of this study lies not only in integrating motivation, self-regulation, affective beliefs, and higher-order mathematical thinking into a unified structural framework, but also in clarifying the relative explanatory roles of distal personality traits and proximal learning processes, showing that mathematical problem-solving is shaped through both affective-belief and cognitive pathways, and demonstrating that the explanatory advantage within the present model lies primarily in domain-specific, modifiable learning processes rather than broad personality dispositions.