DEWEY’S PEDAGOGY OF INTEREST AND THE PERFORMANCE OF STUDENTS IN MATHEMATICS: A SURVEY OF SCHOOLS IN BABESSI SUB-DIVISION, CAMEROON
Abstract
John Dewey contends that interest plays a primordial role and determines a student’s performance in the teaching-learning transaction. This paper sets out to investigate this theory within the experience of students’ interests and performance in Mathematics. In order to attain this objective, we adopted a descriptive survey design. The target population of this study comprised all forms five students in government secondary (grammar) schools Babessi sub division. Purposive sampling was used to select the type of school and random samplings were used in selecting the schools and students. The questionnaires were administered to students as a means of collecting data. The accessible population was 138 students from the four selected schools. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data. The hypothesis was tested with the use of the Pearson product moment correlation at a 0.01 level of significance. The study found that students’ interests have a significant effect on their performance in Mathematics. The students generally have interest in Mathematics, though this alone may not significantly provide good performance as seen in their Mock results for the 2017/2018 academic year where they had 14% pass in Babessi Sub Division. There are other mediating factors including student effort and commitment that may connect interest and performance. Also, from the findings, the students’ interest in Mathematics did not reflect their performance. This could be attributed to other intervening variables which are not considered by this study. Based on these findings, we recommended that curriculum designers and teachers should articulate subject-integration where Mathematics is taught as an essential curricular value for all other career subjects. This is the basis to reinforce students’ interests and performance in the subject.
Article visualizations:
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Dewey, J. (1958). Experience and Nature. Chicago, Open Court pub. Co.
Dewey, J. (1900). The Child and the Curriculum. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Dewey, J. (1907). The School and Society. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Dewey, J. (1966). Democracy and Education: An Introduction to Philosophy of Education. New York, Free Paper Press.
Hansen, D.T. (2006) Dewey’s Book on the Moral Self, in: D. T. Hansen (ed.), John Dewey and our Educational Prospects New York, New York Press.
Hidi, S. (1990) “Interest and its Contribution as a Mental Resource for Learning”. Review of Educational Research, 60, (549–571).
Ma, X. & Kishor, N. (1997). “Assessing the relationship between attitude towards Mathematics and achievement in Mathematics: A Meta-analysis”. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, vol. 28, no. 1, (26–47).
Ngalim V.B. (2014a). “Harmonization of the Educational Sub-systems in Cameroon: A Multicultural Perspective for Democratic Education” in Creative Education, Vol.5. No.5. (334-375).
Ngalim, V, B. (2104b). Lack of harmonisation in the curricula of Cameroon secondary Education: Causes in Centre and Northwest Regions. Saarbrueken, Scholars Press.
Ngalim V. B. (2017). “Subject matter and method: What a pedagogic dialectic in Dewey’s Democracy and Education? In Case studies Journal, Vol.6. No.11. (61-70).
Ngalim,V.B. (2018). “Dewey’s Notion of Interest: Antithetic to or Sympathetic with Educational Development? in R. Heilbronn, C. Doddington, R. Higham (eds.), in Dewey and Education in the 21st Century: fighting back. Emerald Publishing, Cambridge. (201-215).
Nworgu, B. (1999). Educational Research and Basic Issues and Methodology, Ibadan: Wisdom Publishers’ Ltd Nigeria.
Nworgu (2015): Measurement and evaluation, theory and practice, University printing press, Nsukka.
Ponte et al., (1991). Students’ views and attitudes towards Mathematics teaching and learning. University of Lisbon, Portugal.
Renniger, K.A. & Wozniak, R.H. (1985) “Effect of Interest on Attention Shift, Recognition, and Recall in Young Children”. Developmental Psychology, 21.(624– 632).
Renniger, K.A. (1989) “Interests and Non-interests as Context in Reading Comprehension and Mathematical Word Problem Solving”. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco.
Renniger, K.A. (1992) “Individual Interest and Development: Implications for theory and practice”. The Role of Interests in Learning and Development (Hillsdale, NJ, Erlbaum), (361–395).
Tabachnick, B.G. &Fidell, L. S. (2013). Using multivariate statistics. 6th edition, Boston, Pearson Education.
Turner, J. & Meyer, D. (2009). Understanding Motivations in Mathematics: What is happening in Classrooms? A Handbook of Motivation at School. Journal of Educational Research, vol.95, no.6, (359– 364).
Wilkins, J. (2004).“Mathematics and Science Self-concept”. An international Investigation Journal of experimental education 72(4), 331-346.
Zahorik, J. (1996) “Elementary and Secondary Teachers’ Reports of How They Make Learning Interesting”. The Elementary School Journal, 96, (551–564).
Zan, R. & Martino, P. (2008). “Attitude Towards Mathematics: Overcoming the Positive/Negative Dichotomy, in Beliefs and Mathematics”.Monograph Series in Mathematics Education,, Age Publishing & The Montana, (197–214).
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejae.v0i0.2175
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright © 2015 - 2023. European Journal of Alternative Education Studies (ISSN 2501-5915) is a registered trademark of Open Access Publishing Group. All rights reserved.
This journal is a serial publication uniquely identified by an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) serial number certificate issued by Romanian National Library (Biblioteca Nationala a Romaniei). All the research works are uniquely identified by a CrossRef DOI digital object identifier supplied by indexing and repository platforms.
All the research works published on this journal are meeting the Open Access Publishing requirements and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
