Remedial Students’ Perception of Difficult Concepts in Senior High School Core Mathematics Curriculum in Ghana

Abstract

This study employed the survey research design aimed at investigating perceived difficult concepts in senior secondary school core mathematics curriculum by remedial students in Ghana. The study was guided by two research questions and the sample for the study was 112 consisting of 62 females and 50 male remedial students graduating from various secondary schools across Ghana who have been unsuccessful (obtained grades in the range D7-F9) in the WASSCE particularly in core mathematics. The instrument used for the collection of data was a 38-item questionnaire tagged Difficult Concept Identification Questionnaire in Mathematics (DCIQM). The data obtained were analyzed using mean with the criterion mean set at 3.05 for identifying difficult topics and 3.6 for identifying possible causes of the perceived difficulty. Cronbach’s Coefficient Alpha was used to estimate the reliability of the study which was found to be 0.942. The findings revealed a strong positive linear correlation (spearman’s rank correlation coefficient of 0.56) between topics perceived by male and female students as difficult. However, there was a strong negative linear correlation (-0.65) between the topics perceived by science and non-science students as difficult.  Another finding of the study revealed that students identified some mathematics topics such as Ratio and Proportion, Circle theorem, Plane Geometry, Trigonometry & Bearings, Mensuration, Sequence and Series, Business Mathematics, Logarithms, Coordinate Geometry and Similar Triangles as difficult. As part of the findings of the study, students perceived core mathematics as the most difficult core subject. One other important finding of this research was that most SHS students developed their poor dislike and “sense of difficulty” for mathematics from the JHS level. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended amongst others that workshops should be organized to train mathematics teachers on the effective and efficient strategies that should be adopted for the teaching of the identified difficult mathematics concepts.