6Achievement and Effecting Factors in Learning Mathematics of Musahar Students
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Department of Mathematics Education
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.