Pre-SHS Students’ Perception of Difficult Concepts in Junior High School Mathematics Curriculum in Ghana
Journal Title: Asian Research Journal of Mathematics - Year 2017, Vol 3, Issue 2
Abstract
This study employed the survey research design aimed at investigating difficult concepts in Junior Secondary School mathematics curriculum as perceived by Pre-Senior High School students in Ghana. The study was guided by two research questions and the sample for the study was 70 consisting of 34 females and 36 male students. The instrument used for the collection of data was a 27-item questionnaire tagged Difficult Concept Identification Questionnaire in Mathematics (DCIQM). The data obtained were analyzed using mean with the criterion mean set at 2.1 for identifying difficult topics and 3.9 for identifying possible causes of the perceived difficulty. Test-Retest Reliability (Pearson’s r) of the study was found to be 0.837. The findings of the study revealed that students identified some mathematics topics such as Sets and Operations , Real Number System , Business Mathematics , Functions and Mapping , Ratio and Proportion as difficult topics. The highest contributing factor to the perceived difficulty in mathematics was identified as the inability of the students to practice mathematics on their own on regular basis outside lesson hours. Again, students agreed to have developed problems in mathematics from the Primary School. It was also evident from the study that more females perceived mathematics concepts as more difficult than males. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended among others that workshops should be organized to train mathematics teachers on the effective and efficient strategies that should be adopted for the teaching of the identified difficult mathematics concepts.
Authors and Affiliations
Senyefia Bosson-Amedenu
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP338388
- DOI 10.9734/ARJOM/2017/32329
- Views 69
- Downloads 0
Collocation Method for the Solution of Boundary Value Problems
In mathematics, collocation method is a method for the numerical solution of ordinary differential, partial differential and integral equations. The idea is to choose a finite-dimensional space of candidate solutions (us...
A Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem using an Euler's Equation
Fermat's Last Theorem states that there are no solutions to xn + yn = zn for n ≥ 3 and x; y; z non-zero integers. Fermat wrote down a proof for n = 4 [1]. In 1753, Lenohard Euler (1707{1783) wrote down a proof of FLT for...
The 19 Densities of the Hierarchical Bayes Model with Two Conditional Levels
There are 19 densities involved in the hierarchical Bayes model with two conditional levels, in which the 3 densities, that is, the likelihood function, the first level prior density, and the secondlevel prior density, a...
Limit and Continuity Revisited via Convergence
We derive some of the standard results on limits of elementary functions de ned on subsets of real-line, whose rigorous proofs are often avoided in the routine teaching and learning of calculus. For proofs, we essentiall...
Topologized Bipartite Graph
Let G be bipartite graph with V vertices and E edges. A topological space X is a topologized graph if it satisfies the following conditions: Every singleton is open or closed. ∀x∈X, ∣∂(x)∣≤2, where ∂(x) is a boundary...