Abstract

This study titled, “Teacher’s Competence and the Teaching of Mathematics in the Primary Schools in Mfoundi Division” with main objective to investigate the effects of teachers’ competence on the teaching of mathematics in the primary schools in Mfoundi division.

The specific objectives were to investigate the effects of; teacher’s knowledge of Mathematics on pupils’ achievement in the primary school, teacher’s skills in teaching Mathematics on pupils’ achievement in the primary school and teacher’s commitment in the teaching of Mathematics on pupils’ achievement in the primary school.

The study made use of survey research design and the main instrument used for data collection was a structured questionnaire. The population used for this study was made up of all the Primary Schools in Mfoundi Division. The sampling techniques used was the simple random sampling technique to select the teachers who constituted the sample population of 30 teachers.

Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics with the aid of percentages, simple frequencies and measure of central tendency. The results revealed that; teacher’s knowledge of Mathematics had a significant effect on pupils’ achievement in the primary school, teacher’s skills in the teaching of Mathematics had a significant effect on pupils’ achievement in the primary school, teachers’ competence in Mathematics has a significant effect on pupils’ achievement in Mathematics in the primary school.

It was concluded that there exists a significant negative relationship between teachers’ competence and teaching of mathematics in the primary schools in the Mfoundi Division and some recommendations were made.

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Background to the study

Historical Background

Historically, Mathematics which deals with the study of geometry, number theory, algebra, and calculations trace its origin to the Greek mathematician in the 16th century, to Egyptians, the Romans and the Arabs who contributed in one way or the other in laying the foundation of some components of Mathematics that have evolved today.

Early man developed the concept of counting to quantify objects some 35000 to 20000 years ago. During the Egyptian and Greek civilizations, artistic designs by the 15th millennium were geometrically made. With the era of civilization, there was need to carry out exact easements of days’ taxes paid and to measure plots of land. The Mesopotamians started using arithmetic, algebra and geometry which among other things enabled them to study nature, astronomy and come up with their calendar by 3000BC.

Froberg, (1981) provides reference texts on the ancient mathematics particularly the Pythagoras theorem of a right angled triangle. It hammered more on deductive reasoning and proofs. Thus the teaching and learning of Mathematics became scientific in approach. Archimedes introduced the calculation of of the arc of a circle. The Romans, Chinese, the Egyptians and later the Hindu Arabic came up with their numerals and later came up with rules that are widely used in mathematical operations today. Islamic mathematics spread to the western world through Muhammed Inn Musa al-kwarizmi. It dealt with place value. The Maya civilization came up with the idea of zero. During the period of the Renaissance in the 15th century, new developments in Mathematics came up with classical mathematics called calculus brought by sir Isaac Newton and his work touched many aspects of science in including Mathematics.

Girolamo  Cardono came up with the probability theory, thus statistics, marketing, insurance and weather forecasting. George Ferdinand Cantor (1845-1918) came up with the set theory. All these make up the components of Mathematics that are studied today.

Mathematics in the past was centered on geometry and algebra of real number. Today, the context of studying mathematics goes with the evolution of man and technological advancement. From the colonial era in Cameroon in 1884, Mathematics was done for the learners to be able to count, calculate and give accounts to leaders. In the post-colonial era, Mathematics is done   to solve real life problems, to study space, to produce basic needs of the people with accuracy and to ensure logically and creative thinking among other reasons. This is done based on the various components that make up the subject Mathematics. The teaching and learning of Mathematics require a scientific and practical approach making use of various skills, strategies, principles and methodologies for successful teaching and learning.

The teaching and learning of Mathematics today is done in the context of globalization. The world has become a global village due to modern technology. The knowledge and skills acquired from Mathematics can enable us to understand the world by applying skills practically in solving daily life problems. This can be done when the teacher uses his competence to handle the components of Mathematics well.

Conceptual Background

Teacher competence in the primary school is a major concern in the teaching of children and to ensure that they effectively learn for him or her to get efficient results through their achievements. In Cameroon just like in any part of the world, parents look for teachers who are competent in handling and building up their children holistically and especially in a subject like Mathematics. Competence in a teacher is seen as a great motivational factor in teaching and learning in the primary school particularly in Mathematics. This dates back to some decades.

White, (1959) said competence is what brings efficiency at the jobsite.  This is added by Lundberg (1970) in the article “planning the executive development programme” says the programme is aimed at testing competence rather than intelligence. The History of competences states that competence in a person is not measured by the intelligence he or she has but rather what makes him or her to be very efficient in whatever he or she does. Early proponents of competence in various institutions and domains give brief and glaring descriptions of what competence is all about. Hayes (1979) says competence includes the use of knowledge, motivation, social characteristics and skills in a person. This usage permits the person to achieve whatever he or she desires to do in a satisfactory way. Boyatzis, (1982) adds that when a person is competent, it makes him to be hired by an organization to render services there. This is equally the case of a competent teacher who is teaching pupils Mathematics in the primary school. His degree of competence can influence learners’ achievement in the subject Mathematics. When the teacher combines his knowledge, skills and attitudes and blend them with his organizational and methodological know how in handling Mathematics in the primary school, there is the likelihood that most of the learners can do better in the subject that is considered by many as a hard rock.

Competence was used in the American school system when Noam Chomsky (1965) talked about children acquiring linguistic competences and applying them when using language to talk. The use of Competence as a focal approach in learning in Cameroon started in the year 2001 when the ministry of basic education as well as other ministries thought of it. It was focused on putting the child at the heart of every learning activity. In 1918, the competence based approach was introduced officially in the National curricula in the school system. The focus is to teach learners to be able to use the knowledge, skills and attitudes learnt in schools to be able to solve real life situations on their own based on the content they learn from every discipline.

However, the use of the competence as a way of evaluating what learners have learnt in schools will go a long way to evaluate the way teachers teach as learners will have to show proof that they have actually learnt something in every discipline by applying the knowledge, skills and the attitudes they learnt in mathematics lessons. The outcome of the assessment can tell whether children have achieved something from the lessons taught or not. The evaluation is not only done in the school to determine performance but also in the society to determine learners’ abilities to solve real life problems. Achievement is not noticed by performance but by the application of skills, knowledge and attitudes everywhere a child may find himself to overcome a challenge he faces in life to prove that he has learnt.

The researcher has the belief that the teaching of children is not the act of holding a piece of chalk, a duster, a ruler and other didactic materials and resources to talk to the pupils, ask them to copy and then reproduce what he gave to them in order to assess their performance. Rather, the researcher  thinks that teaching children requires a high degree of competence from the teacher who will interact with the children freely while guiding and correcting them so that they can acquire basic knowledge, skills and develop the best attitudes, values and practices that act like cornerstones for their lifelong learning throughout life. Content teachers require some basic qualities and skills in order to help young learners in learning the subject Mathematics well. These qualities and skills are knowledge of the subject matter, knowledge of classroom organization and management skills, interested in helping learners to learn, positive attitude towards the children and the subject being taught, choice of good teaching methods, strategies and evaluation criteria and good feedback.

The success of any learner in any academic subject or discipline largely depends on the educative role played by the teacher to make learning easier for the learners. In English speaking schools today, teachers interact with learners to make learners grasp the basic content and methods and skills of the components of Mathematics. It is taught either using the direct teaching methods or the indirect teaching methods depending on the teacher’s choice of the method of teaching and the components being treated. Equally, the choice of how to teach Mathematics depends the teachers’ competence. This teacher’s competence is judged from his level of academic and professional training, his teaching experience and how often he or she has been attending enriching in-service training and carrying out professional development. If the teacher is highly competent in handling Mathematics as well as his professional know how, the tendency that he can positively influence learners’ achievement in Mathematics is high. On the other hand, a teacher who is not competent, has no experience in teaching Mathematics and doesn’t undergo any training on how to teach Mathematics has the tendency to derail, discourage and dampen the learner’s desire to learn Mathematics.

Theoretical Background

Mathematics education involves the application of a series of learning theories in order to permit learners to learn effectively. These theories are Behaviourism, cognitivism, and the social learning theory.

Behaviourism as a learning theory holds it that a learner can learn well so long as he is stimulated by environmental resources. There are two types of behavioural theories that influence the way the learner can respond to situations based on external stimuli. They are classical and operant conditioning.  Classical conditioning was studied in the beginning of the 19th century by a Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov when he carried out his experiment to see what would happen for the dog to salivate. This theory advances the point that, stimuli provoke the child to experience a change in behaviour as he or she perceives information using his or her sense organs like the eyes, the ears and the skin. They make the child to have a change in behaviour. It is based on the stimulus-response condition. Linked to this change in behaviour are motivation, reward and punishment.

Cognitive learning theory: This learning theory holds it that knowledge is internalized in an individual and can be used in problem-solving situations. It is opposed to the behaviorist theory where learning is seen in a change if behaviour. The theory has proponents like Jean Piaget, Robert Gagne, Jerome Bruner, Bloom and Lev Vygotsky. The theory says that knowledge is built in the mind when the body perceives information from the environment using sense organs like the ears, the eyes, the mouth, the nose and the skin. The information is received, organized, stored in the brain and later retrieved for use. Internal processes that take place in the brain are perception, thinking, remembering, problem solving and attention. All these are necessary for the children in class to learn effectively. Therefore, a teacher’s basket of teaching skills and knowledge of subject matter as aspects of competence are necessary in helping children learn in ways that they can easily remember. Also given that mathematics is mostly aimed at problem solving, the teachers’ problem solving skills also count as well as their ability to organize ideas.

Gagne (1962, 1985, 1987) says that for tasks related to intellectual skills to be achieved, they need to be arranged in order of complexity so that they can permit the individual to find out the stimulus, generate the response, the procedure and subsequently apply rules to solve the tasks. Organizing the tasks in hierarchy makes it easier to organize the instructions to be carried out during teaching and learning. This helps the teacher to carry out a proper lesson design bearing the teacher’s objectives to be achieved and the activities learners will have to carry out.

The Theory of constructivism: This theory holds it that learning takes place when knowledge is built from meaningful experiences as man actively participates and socializes with the others (Hein, 1991). According to Vygotsky (1978), social interaction plays a primordial and critical role in Jan learning and cognition. To him, learning as individuals goes successfully when the individual socializes with the others especially elders who help him in his areas of difficulties when the individual attains his zone of proximal development. Learning here is made easier by the experiences someone has had which permit him to use such experiences as building blocks for new knowledge. The child here is put at the centre of learning activities while the teacher is the facilitator whose work is to offer help and guidance. In the context of our study, the relevance of this theory is clear from the fact that, mathematics is a subject that requires practicing to be able to master best, where a teacher mostly will facilitate learning by having the learners practice more. Therefore, the teachers’ knowledge of the subject and their skills in helping the children practice the various exercises as well their level of commitment has a great role in facilitating their achievement.

The Theory of humanism: This theory was propounded by Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and James F.T Bagental.  The theory states that children are inherently good and will take the best decision and steps to do something when their needs are satisfied. The humanistic theory draws the teacher’s attention to handling the learners in school considering their choices, their emotions, their natural goodness and their intrinsic motivational factors. In the context of this study, this theory highlights two major components; teaching skills and commitment. A teacher who is well equipped with management skills especially in managing children and is as well committed is expected to pay attention to the uniqueness of each learner, and hence putting into considerable the general wellbeing of the learners.

The above theories can help the teacher to carefully design his Mathematics lessons in a way that individual learning styles will be taken into account as he teaches the lesson.

Statement of the problem

It has been noticed from classroom and official examinations results for 2019 and 2020 sessions of the First School Leaving Certificate Examination from the Regional Delegation of Basic Education for the Center Region that despite relentless efforts in teaching and evaluating, learners have continuously scored very low marks resulting in low percentages, inability to do simple calculations and estimate quantities in schools and at home using mathematical knowledge. Besides the failure and low performance, they have no competencies in mathematical knowledge and skills and exhibit negative attitudes towards Mathematics and other disciplines that are related to Mathematics. As a result, the chances of doing science-related subjects that could permit them to end up as technicians, engineers, and designers are limited.

Pupils’ failure, low achievement and incompetence in Mathematics are influenced by many factors among which may be the teacher’s competence. Teacher’s competence plays a major role in the teaching and learning process. Teacher’s competence includes his professional training and in-service training in mathematics, skills in teaching mathematics, and commitment in the teaching of Mathematics. Thus the study aims at finding out how the teacher’s competence in the teaching of Mathematics influences pupils’ achievement in primary school.

Objectives of the study

The objectives of the study is outlined as follows:

1. To find out the effects of teacher’s knowledge of Mathematics on pupils’ achievement in the primary school
2. To find out the effects of teacher’s skills in teaching Mathematics on pupils’ achievement in the primary school.
3. To find out the effects of teacher’s commitment in the teaching of Mathematics on pupils’ achievement in the primary school

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