Home environment in mathematics learning : A case study

Abstract

The main concern or area of this study was “Home Environment in Mathematics Learning: A Case Study”. The objectives of the study were to explore the home environmental factors that affecting in students' mathematics learning at the secondary level and also to identify the strategies taken by the school administration to minimize the home environmental factors that affecting in students' mathematics learning. The descriptive case study approach was adopted to conduct the study for convenience under the qualitative research method. This study was bounded in only Doramba Gaupalika of Ramechhap district and also this study was only delimited on Shree Kantheswor Secondary School of Ramechhap district. In-depth interviews, classroom observations, and document reviews were used as tools for data collection. This study was conducted with a sample of six mathematics students, their parents, and two mathematics teachers. The researcher observed the classroom for ten days and interviewed related students, mathematics teachers, and parents. Collected information was analyzed and interpreted with the help of a conceptual framework and linked with theoretical construction. The study found that lack of parent's education, lack of parent's economic condition, lack of parents' occupation status, lack of socioeconomic status, lack of parents' support, students' household workload, students' family size problem, gender discrimination at home, lack of language problem between home and school environment are some home environmental factors that affecting in students' mathematics learning. And also this study found that to provide an opportunity for the students in learning mathematics at home, to use local language in mathematics teaching/learning at school, create a good learning environment at home for the students, improve the school policies, use effective teaching method and materials in the mathematics classroom, to provide scholarship for the students which family condition is really weak are the main strategies for minimizing the factors that affect in students' mathematics learning. Lack of parent's education, lack of parent's economic condition, and student's workload at home/room are some factors that influence students' mathematics learning. For the improvement of students' achievement in mathematics, schools make strategies to improve these students' achievement to make free extra classes, feedback, mathematics quiz competition, motivational speech, etc.