A Study of Attitudes of Jalari Students' and their Teachers' Towards Mathematics in Lower Secondary Level at Kaski District

Abstract

This study attempts to find out the attitude of Jalari students and their teachers towards mathematics in lower secondary level at Kaski district. This study was conducted on the basis of following objectives. i. To determine the attitude of Jalari students towards mathematics at lower secondary level. ii. To compare boys and girls attitude toward mathematics at lower secondary level. iii. To find the Jalari students' teachers attitudes towards mathematics at lower secondary level. iv. To compare the attitude of Jalari students' and their teachers' towards mathematics at lower secondary level. v. To find the relationship between attitude and achievement of Jalari students.

The above stated objectives of this study were the survey type. The study consists of five chapters. First chapter introduces the introduction. Similarly, second chapter introduces review of related literature, third chapter deals with the methodology applied to carry out the research work, fourth chapter presents the analysis and interpretation of data and last fifth chapter discusses the summary, findings, conclusion and recommendations.

To achieve the objectives, 30 Jalari students (15 boys and 15 girls) were selected from four schools in which Jalari students' are studying. Similarly 10 teachers from same schools were taken.

In order to collect the data, the required primary data are able to be gathered through the questionnaire developed by George Levine (1971/AD) were used for collecting the attitudes of Jalari students towards mathematics. It consisted 32 statements with comprised four aspects of mathematics such as: (i) attitude towards mathematics teaching, (ii) attitude towards mathematics as a process society. (iii) attitude about the difficulty of learning mathematics.. (iv) attitude towards the place of mathematics in society. These attitude statements were approved by research supervisor.

Similarly the researcher used the questionnaire developed by Rai Shamserman on his master thesis (2004) to collect the attitudes of Jalari students teachers. It consisted 34 statements with comprised six aspects of mathematics such as: (i) mathematics curriculum and contents (ii) Teaching method/pedagogy (iii) As a mathematics teacher (iv) relatively thinking about student (v) perspective on the materials. These attitude statements were approved by research supervisor. The attitude of Jalari students and their teachers providing three category of rating scales are as (i) agree (ii) disagree (iii) neutral. The rating score of these scales are 3, 2,1 in favour of favourable, unfavourable and neutral response. For students' achievement in compulsory mathematics, researcher used annual exam report of required students.

Percentage, mean, standard deviation, two- tailed t- test and Karl person product moment correlation coefficient were used as statistical tools for the analysis of data. The t-test was used at 5% level of significance. On the basis of the analysis and interpretation of the data, the finding were as follows: i. The mean attitude score of Jalari boys was greater than the mean attitude score fo Jalari girls. ii. There was positive attitude of Jalari students toward mathematics. iii. There was positive attitude of Jalari students teachers' toward mathematics. iv. There was not significant difference between Jalari boys and girls' attitude toward mathematics. v. There was significant difference between Jalari students and their teachers' attitude toward mathematics. vi. There was not significant relationship between Jalari students attitude towards mathematics and their achievement