Learning difficulties of students in secondary school mathematics

Abstract

This is a quantitative(survey) research entitled with “Learning Difficulties of Students in Secondary School Mathematics” is intended to find out the relationship between actual learning difficulties and perceived learning difficulties at secondary level students. In order to fulfill the objectives of this study, the researcher had taken primary data for the both achievement test and questionnaire to collect the data for actual and perceived learning difficulties. The six secondary schools of Rautahat districts comprising total of240 students were selected for the sample of study. This number was made up of 120 boys and 120 girls from public school through stratified random sampling method. A survey design was adopted for the study. The Students’ Perception of Mathematics Difficult Concept Questionnaire (SPMDCQ) and Mathematics Achievement Test (MAT) were used as instruments for data collection. Data collected were analyzed using means and standard deviations, Spearman Rank Order Correlation and independent t-test. Findings showed that ten (10) of the topics learned were identified as difficult based on students’ perceptions. Furthermore, a negative significant relationship (r = -0.50) was found to exist between the perceived and actual learning difficulties, while significant difference existed between the boys and girls actual learning difficulties all at 5% level of significance. Recommendations were made that teachers try as much as possible to understand their students and their perceptions of mathematics and adopt teaching methods that would be to their benefit. Furthermore, the results of the study indicate that the students’ actual performance is gender sensitive. The finding of the study, it is concluded that the achievement of boy students are better than that of girl students.