MST-Department of Educational Communication and Technology

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Browsing MST-Department of Educational Communication and Technology by Author "Adera, Nelly Atieno"

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    An Investigation into Attitudes of Students' towards Mathematics as a Subject and their Performance in it in Selected Schools in Nairobi Province
    (2012-02-07) Adera, Nelly Atieno
    This study is an investigation into attitudes towards mathematics and how it affects performance in Mathematics as a subject. The attitudes students develop could either make them pass or fail in Mathematics examinations. This study addressed students' attitudes towards mathematics. There has been increasing concern among scholars and educationalists about the poor performance in mathematics. The grade obtained in the national examinations is dismal. The key assumption of this study was that by changing attitudes of students Mathematics they would be motivated to take mathematics seriously hence improves the performance in mathematics. It was noted that schools with positive attitudes towards mathematics performed better than schools that had negative attitude towards mathematics. This being known will assist to put in place proper and corrective interventions that will see the subject enjoy favour among students just like other subjects. Once this is achieved the Kenya's national objective contributed by mathematics as a subject will be realized and therefore it will have limited obstacles towards achieving industrialization in the year 2020. The research mainly used a questionnaire to obtain responses. The questionnaire was developed to meet the needs of the students. The researcher purposely picked form four students due to their long life in secondary schools. Three schools were selected from Nairobi Province and they participated in this study. The schools were Pangani Girls', Ngara Girls' and Jamhuri Boys'. Once filled the researcher assembled the data found into tables and percentages in every particular isolated behaviour. Relevant literature review was obtained concerning attitudes and performance. From the existing literature it was revealed that attitudes affect performance of students in mathematics. The study found that: Ø Attitudes towards mathematics affect performance in its as a subject. Ø Most students like quizzes and examinations but some still do not perform well in mathematics. Ø Performance in mathematics in Ngara and Jamhuri School was very low compared to performance of Pangani School. Ø Majority of students are aware of what they need to do in order to pass mathematics, but they still they didn't perform well. The study recommends that emphasis be made for the teachers to change negative attitudes of the students. A key recommendations was that students need to be exposed to peers (especially those from good performing schools) through symposium and the teachers to be exposed to seminars and in-service training