Perception of Students Towards Optional Mathematics

Abstract

The study attempted to assess the perception of students towards optional mathematics as well as their perception with respect to gender and education institutes. This study is based on mixed method under concurrent design. The survey was conducted for quantitative data and interview for qualitative data. The purpose of this study was to find the perception of students towards optional mathematics and to find the factors influencing perception of secondary level students towards optional mathematics. Researcher selected 220 students from 8 government and 2 institutional school by simple random sampling method and among them 5 students selected for interview by purposive sampling method. The data were collected from questionnaire and open ended interview schedule. For quantitative data 34 statements of questionnaire were used in this study. Percentage, weighted mean and t-test were used to find out the perception of students towards optional mathematics at 0.05 level of significance. The responses from interview were recorded and transcribed under the headings and then were organized in themes and categories that emerged and analyzed by triangulation method. The result of this study showed that most of the students had positive perception toward optional mathematics. However there was significance differences between the perception of boys and girls, government and institutional school students towards optional mathematics. And the influencing factors of secondary level students towards optional mathematics were found to be teacher student's interaction, student's participation, application of optional mathematics, content knowledge and importance of optional mathematics