Gender and School Location as Factors of Students’ Difficulty in Geometry: Implication for Girl-Child Education

Abstract

The study explored gender and school location-related differences with respect to difficulties in geometry among students. The study is an analytic survey research design, because, it attempted to compare the statuses of two groups of subjects in a given tribute. The effect or observation investigated in this study was students’ areas of difficulties in geometry. Three research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. The population of the study was 9,200 senior secondary school three students from Obollo and Nsukka Education zones of Enugu state, Nigeria. The sample of the study, using cluster proportionate random sampling technique was 1,000 students made up of 492 boys and 508 girls, clustered as 515 urban and 485 rural students from the two education zones. The instrument for data collection was Test on Secondary School Geometry (TOSSG) developed by the researchers, using Test Blue Print to ensure content validity. The 30-multiple choice test instrument was validated by two experts from the department of Science Education, University of Nigeria, Nsukka and trial tested on 20 students from a co-educational school in Enugu education zone of the state. The reliability coefficient of the instrument was 0.91, Using Kuder-Richardson 20 (KR-20). Data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer research questions, while the null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance, using the Z-test statistic. The result of the study indicated differences in achievement with respect to gender and school location. Boys experienced less difficulty than girls, while urban students experienced less difficulty than their rural counterparts. It was recommended that teachers should adopt a variety of pedagogical strategies that are gender and culture-sensitive, capable of securing girl-child education and addressing different learning styles within instructional environments.