Influence of perceptual learning styles and self efficacy on matiiematics achievement among secondary school students in Nyamira North district, Kenya

Abstract

This study will be undertaken to find out how perceptual learning style and self efficacy influence mathematics achievement among secondary school students in Nyamira North District The research problem to be addressed in this study will be to find a solution towards secondary student's poor mathematics achievement in Nyamira North District where perceptual learning style and self efficacy will be looked at whether they have an influence on mathematics achievement. Visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles, which fall in the category of perceptual learning style have been selected because they represent the primary means of receiving information through one's senses before interpretation. Academic self efficacy and how it influences mathematics achievement will be investigated. Descriptive and correlational designs will be adopted in this study. The target population will be form three students of Nyamira North District. Purposive sampling will be used to sample Nyamira North District as the location of study. Since schools in the district are of different groups, stratified sampling will be used for these various groups. Simple random sampling will be used within sub-groups. Students to be involved in the study will be obtained through systematic sampling. The study will be based on Bandura's social cognitive theory and Neil Fleming' Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic (VAK) theory. Learning styles test, self efficacy scale, and document analysis are the instruments of data collection that will be used. Data collected will be coded and analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Analysis of data will be based on: there is no significant relationship between learning styles and students' mathematics achievement (simple regression); there is no significant relationship between self efficacy and students' mathematics achievement (simple regression); there is no significant relationship between learning styles, self efficacy, and mathematics achievement (multiple regression) null hypotheses and their statistical tools. The result of the findings may be significant to teachers, students, the ministry of Education and scholars. It is expected that the findings of this study may serve as a basis for making recommendations on how to improve mathematics achievement and learning in secondary schools.