| dc.description.abstract | This study was undertaken to find out how perceptual learning styles and self-efficacy
influence mathematics achievement among secondary school students in Nyamira North
sub-County. The research problem addressed in this study was to find a solution towards
secondary school students' poor mathematics achievement in Nyamira North District.
Visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic learning styles, which are in the category of perceptual
learning style, were selected because they represent the primary means of receiving
information through one's senses before interpretation. Self-efficacy and how it
influences mathematics achievement was investigated. Descriptive and correlational
research designs were adopted in this study. The population was 1981 students, 69
mathematics teachers, and 38 schools. Quantitative data were collected from 311 (186
girls and 125 boys) form three students from 26 schools of Nyamira North sub-County.
Purposive sampling was used to sample Nyamira North sub-County as the location of
study. Since schools in the sub-county are of different groups, stratified sampling was
used for these various groups. Simple random sampling was used within sub-groups.
Students who. were involved in the study were obtained through systematic sampling.
The study was based on Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory (1977) and Neil Fleming's
Visual, Auditory, and Kinaesthetic (VAK) Theory (1995). Learning styles test, selfefficacy
questionnaire, and document analyses were the instruments of data collection.
Descriptive statistics used ihcluded measures of central tendencies, distributions, and
percentages. Piloting was conducted before the actual study in two secondary schools.
Split-half technique was used to determine reliability of the instruments which found a
correlation coefficient of 0.80. Data collected were coded and analyzed using Statistical
Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software. The results indicated a significant
variability in learning style preference at 0.05, it also revealed that learning styles have no
contribution towards the performance of mathematics hence the null hypothesis was
accepted. Self-efficacy has an influence on mathematics achievement hence the null
hypothesis was rejected. The findings also indicated that self-efficacy was a major
predictor of mathematics achievement in secondary schools since 90.4% of the variance
in mathematics achievement was explained by self-efficacy. 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. The
study recommends further research to explore and quantify effects of other variables such
as teaching strategies, classroom practices, and assessment practices on mathematics
achievement. | en_US |
