Opportunity to learn first year mathematics in teacher training colleges in Ghana
Abstract
The purpose of the study was to find out students which of the 18 topics in the first year teacher training mathematics syllabus were not taught by the end of the year and which ones were found difficult. Six hundred and ninety-five second year pre-service teachers, made up of 186 females and 506 males, from 18 teacher-training colleges participated in the study. The study was a crosssectional survey and data was collected using a questionnaire. An alpha level of 0.05 was used for all statistical tests. The results showed that two topics, measures of central tendency and conditional probability were not taught. It was found that ten of the eighteen topics were found by the students to be difficult to understand. Further results showed that the Arts students found seven topics more difficult than the Science students and female students also found ten topics more difficult than the males. It is recommended that the teacher training college tutors make efforts to complete the PS1 syllabus. Attempts should be made to integrate the discovery approach into teaching and learning difficult mathematics topics. It is further recommended that more tutorials, extra classes and additional assignments should be given to the Arts and female students.African Journal of Educational Studies in Mathematics and Sciences Vol. 2(2) 2004: 65-78
License agreement and author copyright
AJESMS does not require authors to assign copyright of their published original research papers to the journal. Articles are published under a CC BY license(Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License). The CC BY license allows for maximum dissemination and re-use of open access materials and is preferred by many research funding bodies. Under this license users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit) and remix (adapt) the contribution including for commercial purposes, providing they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author (read full legal code).
Availability of materials and data
An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors' published claims. Therefore, a condition of publication in AJESMS is that authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols promptly available to readers without undue qualifications in material transfer agreements. Any restrictions on the availability of materials or information must be disclosed to the publishing team at the time of submission. Supporting data must be made available to Editorial Board Members and reviewers at the time of submission for the purposes of evaluating the manuscript. Reviewers may be asked to comment on the terms of access to materials, methods and/or data sets; AJESMS reserves the right to refuse publication in cases where authors do not provide adequate assurances that they can comply with the publication's requirements for sharing materials.
After publication, readers who encounter refusal by the authors to comply with these policies should contact the AJESMS publishing team. In cases where we are unable to resolve a complaint, the matter may be referred to the authors' funding institution and/or a formal statement of correction may be published, attached online to the publication, stating that readers have been unable to obtain necessary materials to replicate the findings.
Sharing datasets
A condition of publication AJESMS is that authors make materials, data and associated protocols promptly available to others without preconditions.
Datasets must be made freely available to readers from the date of publication, and must be provided to Editorial Board Members and reviewers at submission, for the purposes of evaluating the manuscript.
