scholarly journals Students Mathematics Interest in Senior High Schools: Empirical Evidence from Ashanti Region of Ghana

Author(s):  
Yarhands Dissou Arthur

The relevance of students’ academic interest in mathematics is of great concern to stakeholders in education. The present study models students’ interest in mathematics (SIM) using mathematics facility (MF), mathematics connection (MC), teacher motivation (TM) as well as instructor quality and availability (IQA). The study randomly selected 1500 students from 10 senior high schools from the Ashanti region of Ghana; however, 1,263 of the participants fully participated in the study. These participants were made to respond to validated self-administered questionnaires with alpha-reliability of 0.74, 0.69, 0.70, 0.699 and 0.68 for SIM, MC, MF, IQA and TM respectively. Findings from the study showed that MC, MF, IQA and TM explain 71.6% of the variance in students’ interest in mathematics. The study further found that approximately 15% of variability in teachers’ ability to connect mathematics to real life problems is attributable to availability of mathematics facility as well as instructor quality and availability. The study finally found that availability of mathematics facilities for teaching and learning explains 12.4% of instructor quality in teaching mathematics. The study concluded that students’ interest in mathematics is influenced significantly by the teachers’ ability to connect mathematics to real life and the immediate environment, availability of mathematics facility, teacher motivation as well as instructor quality and availability. The study recommended for mathematics educators to take into account the influence of these factors and integrate them in the delivery of mathematics in high schools.

Author(s):  
Mahmoud Hawamdeh ◽  
Idris Adamu

This chapter discuss how Problem-Based learning (PBL) helps to achieve this century's approach to teaching and learning for students in higher educational institutions. If adopted, this method of teaching will enable student to attain learning skills (skills, abilities, problem solving, and learning dispositions that have been identified) to acquire a lifelong habit of approaching problems with initiative and diligence and a drive to acquire the knowledge and skills needed for an effective resolution. And they will develop a systematic approach to solving real-life problems using higher-order skills.


1986 ◽  
Vol 79 (8) ◽  
pp. 602-603
Author(s):  
Eric F. Wood

One of the ironies of teaching mathematics is that real-life problems, although interesting, are often too difficult to consider in a secondary school classroom. Consequently the problems that are used in texts are often somewhat contrived. While working at the local weather office, I came upon several applications of trigonometry that are both interesting and instructive for high school students. The problems require that some background knowledge be presented to the students, but often they will have at least heard about the ideas from the nightly weather forecasts on television. These ideas make an interesting discussion for both teacher and student.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ita Chairun Nissa ◽  
I Ketut Sukarma ◽  
Sanapiah Sanapiah ◽  
Ade Kurniawan ◽  
Sabrun Sabrun

The West Lombok Mathematics’ Teacher Community needs to be improved because of the government's demands on the quality of teaching mathematics in schools. Having good mathematical knowledge and being able to solve real-life problems is an important key for teachers to be able to develop innovative mathematics teaching. But in fact, teacher training that emphasizes aspects of mathematical content is still not widely implemented. This is an important reason for this training. The training is carried out in one day through video screening and rich task modeling. The assessment of this training is measured using a closed questionnaire that asks the teacher's attitude towards statements related to the training material, training methods, the ability of the speakers, and the motivation of the trainees. The training that was carried out succeeded in getting a positive response that most of the teachers gave a very agreeing attitude. The teachers also feel motivated and have good expectations for applying the knowledge and skills gained from training into teaching mathematics in the classroom


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ugochukwu Chinonso Okolie ◽  
Elisha Nwonu Elom ◽  
Paul Agu Igwe ◽  
Michael Olayinka Binuomote ◽  
Chinyere Augusta Nwajiuba ◽  
...  

PurposeThis study explores how the implementation of problem-based learning (PBL) in technical and vocational education training (TVET) systems of Nigerian higher education (HE) can enhance quality graduate outcomes. The study also explores the issues and challenges of PBL implementation in the TVET system of Nigerian HE.Design/methodology/approachThis study follows the assumptions of qualitative research. The authors interviewed 55 participants and had a focus group with 7 TVET postgraduate students. The 55 interviewees were drawn from TVET teachers (n = 33; 24 males and 9 females), Directors at National Board for Technical Education (n = 4; 3 males and 1 female), Directors of National Directorate of Employment (n = 5; 3 males and 2 females), Directors at the Federal Ministry of Education (n = 3 males), and industry executives (n = 10; 7 males and 3 females). Data were collected through a semistructured interview approach, transcribed and coded using NVivo 12 plus and analyzed through thematic analysis.FindingsThe results show that PBL in the Nigerian TVET system has positive implications for quality TVET graduate outcomes in that it can enable integrating theory and practice, motivate learning, improve students' self-efficacy, allow students to construct learning on their own, enhance graduate competencies and graduate employability. It also revealed six perceived possible major challenges to effective implementation of PBL in the Nigerian TVET system, which includes inadequacy of teaching and learning facilities; corruption in Nigerian education sector; recruitment of unqualified incompetent TVET teachers; difficulties in identifying real-life problems, among others. Participants offered benchmarks and actions and standards for improving the identified challenges, which formed a framework for coping with issues, challenges, and barriers to effective implementation of PBL in the TVET system of Nigerian HE (Table 1).Originality/valueThe results of this study are original and serve as an advocacy for Nigerian HE authorities to explore how PBL can be implemented in the TVET system to improve graduate outcomes. The study serves as a starting point for more research in the domain of improving the quality of TVET programs in Nigerian HE. Industry leaders and policymakers in Nigeria and other developing countries could use the findings from this study to increase HE and industry participation and partnership for quality of TVET program.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 235
Author(s):  
I Wayan Dirgeyasa

This research aims to find out the typical categories of answers to Yes/No questions most used by students at selected Public Senior High Schools in Medan, Indonesia. These schools were classified into top favorite, medium favorite and non-favorite schools. Through a stratified clustered random sampling technique, six schools were chosen consisting of two schools from each classification. A number of 40 students were chosen from three class X, three class XI and three class XII at each of the six chosen schools, making a total sample of 720 students with 360 sets of dialogue scripts. Data was collected through documentation-recording dialogues. The data was transcribed and analyzed by descriptive analysis. The results of the research showed that: 1) the categories of the students’ answers to the Yes/No questions were distributed variously in terms of the six models. However, the distribution of the answers was not proportionally equal amongst all the models, 2) the dominant distribution of the answers was the third model with the formula Yes/No+additional information such as confirming, supporting, etc., reaching 37% of the total answers, whilst the least common models were the sixth and fourth categories respectively, which had 1% and 3% of the answers respectively, and finally 3) there was no significant difference in the distribution of the students’ answers in terms of the class of school whether top favorite, medium favorite or non-favorite. In conclusion, the ways to answer Yes/No questions need to be developed amongst students by their teachers by teaching and learning using natural, real life-like situations and in contextual ways.


1977 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 4-8
Author(s):  
Mary Montgomery Lindquist ◽  
Marcia Dana

Magazines have great potential for helping teach mathematics. Their use is directly related to some of the concerns in teaching mathematics today. For one thing, magazines are readily available and inexpensive—if you or the children collect used ones. Another “plus” is the fact that the ads, the articles, and the pictures are chock-full of “real-life problems.” There are consumer problems of all sorts. Also. there are many magazines that focus on things that are interesting to children. Different children will enjoy sports, movie. racing, news. or other types of magazines. Thus. magazines can assist in individualizing instruction as you tap the interestf of the children.


Author(s):  
Pham Thi Thu Hien ◽  
Ha Thanh Hang

Vietnamese poems in the Medieval period have been taught in high schools for a long time. However, many students find difficult to read/receive these works because they have been around for a long time and have unique characteristics. At the same time, the teacher's reading comprehension method also does not help students to link the reading content from the text to their current life. The paper proposes a way to overcome the aforementioned limitation, which is to build and use connected and integrated questions in teaching reading comprehension of Vietnamese poems in the Medieval period for high school students, in order to connect activities teaching and learning these works with real life and develop some general competencies as well as specific competencies for learners.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3C) ◽  
pp. 707-719
Author(s):  
Metwali Saad Metwali Elsaidi ◽  
Marina V. Egupova

The aim of this study of the effect of authentic activities in teaching mathematics on mathematical modeling processesThe authentic activities were used by conducting the experiment, where work was with 45 pupils 13th years old of preparatory school (It’s the second stage of the educational stages in Egypt, and it’s the next stage after Primary school) in Al Qalyubia (One of the cities in Egypt) in the 2020/2021 academic year and studying this effect. The results showed, that value of the impact size through the value of h2 was calculated 0.79, and this meant the strong effect of the authentic activities on the development of mathematical modeling processes, where authentic activities lead to the development of mathematical modeling processes among the pupils because Authentic Activities provides pupils with the opportunity to study real-life problems, analyze them from various aspects and provide a correct picture of the problem that contributes to the increase of students' awareness of what they are learning.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 1676-1686
Author(s):  
Peter Anayitime ◽  
Emmanuel Adobah ◽  
Ebenezer Frimpong Ofobi

The study sought to assess factors affecting teaching and learning of mathematics in some selected senior high schools (SHS) in Kumasi Metropolis of the Ashanti Region of Ghana. A descriptive survey was the research design used for the study. In all, a total of 90 respondents; made up of 10 SHS mathematics teachers and 80 SHS elective mathematics students were selected from five (5) SHS in the Metropolis.  A purposive sampling technique of the non-probability sampling procedure was used to select the respondents for the study. Data obtained were analysed using both quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods. It was revealed that lack of mathematics laboratories/practical rooms; lack/inadequate mathematics practical activities and the use of lecture method in teaching mathematics were the three (3) major factors affecting SHS students in the learning of mathematics in the selected schools. Again, it was observed that lack of TLMs; heavy workload on mathematics teachers and lack of mathematics laboratories/practical rooms were three (3) major factors affecting mathematics teachers in the teaching of mathematics. Finally, it was revealed that provision and use of appropriate TLMs in teaching mathematics; and engaging students in hands-on and minds-on oriented lessons were some of the strategies that could be used to improve SHS students’ academic performance in mathematics. It was therefore, recommended that Government of Ghana and other stakeholders in SHS education should build mathematics laboratories/practical rooms in all SHS in the country and also equip them with requisite TLMs so that students can learn mathematics in more practical-oriented manner instead theoretical approach being used in senior high schools.


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