6Achievement and Effecting Factors in Learning Mathematics of Musahar Students

Abstract

This study entitled “Achievement and Effecting Factors in Learning Mathematics of Musahar Students” intended to find out the achievement and leading factors that effects in learning mathematics Musahar students. The main objectives of this study were to identify the achievement in mathematics of Musahar children and to identify the leading factors that effects on their mathematical achievement. Where, the study is based only on the basic level of government school and on Musahar ethnic group of Nepal. In this study, to fulfill above objective the researcher conducted achievement test with interview schedule and observation form to collect the required information. The researcher used the explanatory sequential mixed research design. Quantitative data were analyzed by the statistical tools and qualitative data were analyzed by thematic network approach of analysis. For this, researcher selected three sample schools from Rupandehi district by purposive sampling. Sixty students were selected for achievement test. Similarly mathematics teachers, head teachers, parents and students were included in interview. The researcher analyzed the collected data with the help of conceptual understanding on the basis of factors related to learning environment at home and school, pre-knowledge, interest and labor in mathematics of the students and maternal education and support. The finding of the study shows that, there is very low achievement in mathematics of Musahar students in comparison of National Assessment of Students Achievement (NASA) 2011 and 2015. From the study, it is found that there a lots of factor behind low achievement of Musahar students such as factors related to school management, factors related to students, factors related to teacher, factors related to parents and factors related to environments. Specially, in learning mathematics Musahar students have lake of fundamental concepts of mathematics, problem to transform the word problems into algebraic expression, very low knowledge in process solving skill and application of concepts, formulas in the new context. The main reasons for the above problems are the irregularity and wrong concept in schooling. From the observation of schooling records of Musahar community and from interview, it is found that the low achievement of Musahar students is their genetic factor.