Perception of Students Towards Optional Mathematics
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Department of Mathematics education
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