INTRODUCTION
The target of every educational system is to ensure that students
achieve a satisfactory outcome in whatever they are taught based on the
curriculum contents and as well to be able to solve subsequent problems in real
life situation. Education is therefore, an act of acquiring knowledge through
teaching and learning process of principles and practices that enhanced
development. However, the contents of educational process are usually measured
to know the extent to which the knowledge is acquired through performance/achievement
test. Academic performance is one of the major variables that measure an
individual’s success or failure in school system (Adikwu
& Chibabi, 2018). Academic performance, though
measured in different forms, has the tendency of revealing the individual
knowledge and quality of education received by the respective learner.
Quality education supposed to provide solution to societal problems and
if any difference, it has not possessed the desire quality. The global
monitoring report for quality education in Battista 2014 indicates that the
quality of learning among children in sub-Saharan Africa is quite low, so there
is need to provide quality teaching and learning to make citizens of these
nations compete favourably with their counterparts from other nations in the 21st
century. Bold et al in Evans and Acosta (2020) in a recent evidences across
seven countries in Sub-Sharan Africa found that, in
third grade, less than two in three children could read letter and only about
half of the children could read a word or put numbers in order This low quality of learning as observed has
been credited to be diminishing teachers quality and impacting teaching quality,
students’ learning outcome via attitudes/interest, unavailability of learning
materials among others (Manrique2020, Karue & Amukowa,
2013; Tshabalala & Ncube,
2013).
Nigeria precisely needs functional and quality education that can
engineer her citizens towards achieving complex skills for further schooling,
responsible citizenship, international competitiveness and lifelong learning.
This functional education can only be achieved through effective and innovative
teaching and learning process at all level of educational system (Akanwa, et al., 2019). Importantly, teachers must be able
to create an environment to offer quality learning for all student. Hence, innovative
teaching and learning are needed, to tackle poor quality education by
addressing the rate of poor performance in schools especially in numeracy
knowledge. There is no subject or field of study that does not make use of some
forms of numeracy knowledge (Abdullahi, 2017). Knowledge
of numeracy in an individual life cannot be ignored as no one ever lived
without numeracy. Hence, numeracy is important in some ways such as: working out number of minutes to
accomplish a task, increasing a recipe to serve extra guests, checking if we
have received the right change, working out how much to tip in a
restaurant, setting and keeping to a budget, helping children with
homework, managing our diet and nutrition, measuring medicine doses, making
sense of statistics and graphs in the news. Therefore, numeracy is the effective use of numbers to meet the general demands of
life at home, in paid work, and for participation in community and civic life. Falade, Dalong and Gyot (2020) see numeracy as the ability to understand and
work with numbers which involves the ability to apply simple numerical concepts
and comprehending fundamental arithmetic like addition, subtraction,
multiplication and division.
Numeracy skill is required in all academic programmes, despite the
importance of mathematics; many problems seem to beset mathematics education in
Nigeria. These problems have resulted in the consistent poor or decline performance
in numeracy by many people. However, this declining state of numeracy knowledge
is attributed to a number of factors such as attitude/interest of pupils (Adikwu & Chibabi, 2018); lack
of instructional resources (Yara & Otieno, 2010); instructional techniques (Olulonye, 2010), among others. Pupils’ academic achievement
and interest level have not been encouraging over the years as revealed among
primary schools’ graduates in the state. This justifies the need for this
baseline assessment of numeracy knowledge and the causes of the persistent poor
performance in numeracy.
Researches have established that student at post primary education
levels performed poorly in numerical tasks and this was traced to poor
background in numeracy knowledge from their primary level (Oyinloye
& Popoola, 2013). Similarly, at primary school
level is also found that, pupils performed very poor and have low competencies
in Numeracy, literacy and as well as Life skills (Ikoro
& Eleri 2017). Many reasons can be traced to this
poor and low performance. The pupils’ interests and attitudes towards numeracy
and poor teaching strategies. Sometime, the pupils were not well exposed to
numeracy properly through variety of methods and learning innovation that can
stimulate their interest and attitude, this has further created gap which are
now difficult to be addressed as the pupils advanced in life and educational
career. Popoola (2014), stated that children ought to
be helped early enough to develop positive attitude towards numeracy because
they will need to build their future academic attainments especially in
Mathematics based on the knowledge acquired during the primary school years.
Despite that the decline is identified as a problem, there is scanty
record and statistics on the extent of the poor performance in numeracy
knowledge in primary schools in the state. Also, little has been done on a
substantive reason that causes the persistent poor performance of the pupils at
that level of education. Hence, this justifies the reason for baseline study to
ascertain the level of the primary school pupil’s numeracy knowledge in plateau
state central senatorial district. Examine the pupils’ interest and attitude
visa vis the teaching
strategies employed by the teachers in the teaching and learning of numeracy in
the classrooms.
Research questions
1.
What is the level of numeracy knowledge
acquired by public primary school pupils in Central Senatorial District of
Plateau State?
2.
How effective is the teaching methods being
used in the learning of numeracy among public primary pupils in Central
Senatorial District of Plateau State?
3.
To what extent is the learners’ interest/attitude
in the teaching and learning of numeracy in public primary schools?
Statement of hypothesis
1.
There is no significant difference in the
numeracy knowledge acquired by the pupils when compared with expected standard
knowledge
2.
There is no significant difference between
the teachers’ teaching methods/strategies and pupils’ interest/attitude to
teaching and learning of numeracy as observed in public primary schools
METHODOLOGY
The study
used exploratory design. The design was appropriate as the researchers explored
through a baseline assessment of pupil’s numeracy knowledge, the dominant teaching
method(s) teachers used in numeracy lesson delivery and pupils’ interest/attitude
towards numeracy lesson delivery in the classroom across the primary schools
under consideration in Plateau State Central Senatorial District. The
population for the study consists of all numeracy teachers teaching at primary
five (5) levels and pupils in public primary schools in the entire town heading
the local government within zone. The primary five teachers and pupils were
selected purposively based on the fact that at that level pupils have had basic
numeracy knowledge. The zone had five local government areas and five town as
the Local Government Headquarters. The sampled schools were purposively
selected based on the centrality of those schools in all the five towns heading
the local government areas within the zone. Hence, the sample size were five
(5) teachers teaching numeracy at the primary five(5) level of the selected
schools and a total of 100 pupils randomly selected under the respective numeracy
teachers. The data collection tools were Teachers
Numeracy Teaching Methods Observation checklist (TNTMOC), Pupils Numeracy
knowledge Test (PNKT), Pupils Interest/attitude to
Numeracy knowledge Checklist (PINKC) were used. The checklists were used to
obtain information regarding the teaching methods and strategies teachers used
in the teaching and learning as well as pupils’ interest and attitude towards
numeracy while the numeracy achievement test was conducted to ascertain pupils’
numeracy knowledge. However, a standardized unified pupil’s numeracy
performance test developed by the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB)
was used to obtain pupils performance in numeracy. The performance test, was
based on the pass mark of eight (8) out of twenty questions. Hence, eight was
used as the expected mean for all the schools used for the study. The data
collected were analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Specifically,
mean, standard deviation and t-test statistics were used at 0.05 significant
level. Also, a 2.50 decision point was used to accept or reject the
observational checklist items.
RESULTS
Research
Question One
What is the level of numeracy
knowledge acquired by primary five pupils in public schools, Central Senatorial
District of Plateau State?
Table 1: Mean Scores of Levels of Numeracy Knowledge
acquired by Primary Five Pupils in Public Schools Central Senatorial District
of Plateau State
|
Schools
|
N
|
Mean
|
Std. Dev.
|
|
1
|
20
|
7.10
|
1.361
|
|
2
|
20
|
5.69
|
1.426
|
|
3
|
20
|
6.81
|
1.440
|
|
4
|
20
|
4.86
|
1.697
|
|
5
|
20
|
3.78
|
1.425
|
|
Overall mean
|
100
|
5.65
|
1.376
|
The table1 presents the mean
performance of the pupils in numeracy knowledge acquired by primary five pupils
in the study area. The result revealed 7.10 as the highest mean obtained while
4.86 was the lowest from a total of twenty question items. The test value of 8
was used to determine those that passed based on the average obtained. This
implies that none of the schools obtain an average above the test value, this indicating
low performance of the pupils in numeracy test.
Research
Question Two
How effective is the teaching methods
being used in the learning of numeracy among public primary pupils in Central
Senatorial District of Plateau State?
The table 5
presents significant difference between the observed teachers teaching
methods/strategies and pupils interest/attitude
towards teaching and learning of numeracy as observed in the study. The
hypothesis was accepted since the p-values 0f 0.519 obtained, was greater than
the 0.05 significance level. Therefore, it was concluded that there is no
significant difference between teachers teaching method/strategies and pupils
interest/attitude to teaching and learning of numeracy. This implies that there
is teachers’ teaching methods and pupils interest/attitude has impacted the
learning of numeracy among public primary schools’ pupils in the state.
DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
The research question one revealed the
baseline numeracy knowledge among public primary schools’ pupils in the study
area based on their performance in the numeracy test. The hypothesis tested
further established that a significance difference exists in the pupil’s
performance in numeracy test compare to the expected test values of eight (8)set as passed mark out of 20 marks. The result revealed
that, numeracy knowledge acquired by the pupils were below the expected average
passed mark specified in the study. This is supported by Manrique
(2020) who identified there is low quality of learning and knowledge and is
impacting students learning outcomes, Battista (2014) who found the quality of
learning among children in sub-Saharan Africa is quite low and Popoola (2014), who found that pupils ought to be helped
early enough to develop positive attitude towards numeracy as there were
decline in performance.
The
research question two examine effectiveness of teachers teaching
methods/strategies being employed in teaching and learning of numeracy concepts.
The result revealed that, teachers’ teaching method/strategies are not highly
effective to improve pupils’ numeracy skills and is a contributing factors
affecting pupils learning of numeracy in the classroom. The result is in
accordance with Adikwu and Chibabi
(2018), and Olulonye (2010) who attributed the
declining in numeracy achievement to instructional techniques, and
interest/attitude of the pupils. The implication is that, the ineffectiveness
of teachers teaching methods/strategies have resulted to this persistent low
performance and low quality of learning of numeracy among primary schools’
pupils. The finding also, agrees with Battista (2014), (Karue
and Amukowa, 2013; Tshabalala
& Ncube, 2013), that the quality of learning
among children in sub-Saharan Africa is quite low so there is need to provide
quality teaching and learning to make citizens of these nations compete
favourably with their counterparts from other nations in the 21st
century.
The research question three revealed low level of pupil’s
interest/attitude towards learning of numeracy this was in agreement with Adikwu and Chibabi (2018) who attributed the declining in numeracy
knowledge to be pupil’s interest/attitude. The hypothesis two further established that, there is no significant
difference between the teachers’ teaching methods/strategies and pupils’
interest/attitude to teaching and learning of numeracy in public primary
schools. The evidence of this is that ineffectiveness observed in teachers
teaching methods/strategies attributed to pupils’ low interest/attitude towards
teaching and learning of numeracy in the study.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the study showed that there is a decline in pupils numeracy knowledge in the study area and teachers’
teaching strategies and pupils’ interest/attitude are attributed causes of the
decline in numeracy knowledge. The baseline numeracy knowledge test further
revealed a wide gap as against the expected outcome with a significant
difference in the pupil’s performance in numeracy test. In addition, the
results show that pupils have negative interest/attitude towards mathematics.
Recommendations
Based on
the findings and conclusion drawn from the study, the following recommendations
were made:
1.
Teachers need to be trained in the use of appropriate and innovative teaching
methods/strategies as well as adequate provision of teaching-learning materials
to facilitate numeracy teaching-learning process effectively.
2.
Government should organize seminars and
workshops for mathematics teachers on innovative teaching methods to improve
pupils’ numeracy performance.
3.
Teachers should explicitly teach new
knowledge, concepts and skills in multiple ways to connect new and existing
knowledge in numeracy this will enhance pupils’ interest which in turn
re-direct their attitude towards numeracy learning.
Acknowledgement
Appreciation to Tetfund Centre of Excellence
for Innovative Teaching and Learning in Primary and Early Childhood Education
(T-CEIPEC). Federal College of Education, Pankshin, as the researchers
leverage on one of their activities to collect data for this study.
Conflict of interest
The authors declared that there
is no conflict of interest in the research work.
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