Mathematics Students’ Perception about Professional Development Programmes (PDPs): Case of South African University

Abstract

This stu dy investiga ted the perception of ca ndidate mathema tics teachers a bou t Professional Development Programmes (PDPs). A questionnaire with Cronbach's alpha of 0.87 was used. Simple random sampling was employed to collect data from 182 undergraduate Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) and Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) University students. Due to the research questions, the researcher employed two types of data analyses thus; (1) partial correlation and analysis of variance (ANOVA) and (2) factor analysis. The analysis wa s conducted to explore the relationship between two variables, while statistically controlling for (getting rid of) the effect of another variable that might be influencing the relationship. With respect to the current study, partial correlation was carried out to explore the correlation effect after controlling for respondents' tendency to present themselves in a positive light on PDPs. Further analysis using ANOVA was employed to conduct statistical significance. Factor analysis identified set of factors/structures that represented the underlying relationships among a group of related variables. The findings of factor analysis revealed three factors/structures for the emerged measures of PDPs thus: (1) support from mathematics administrators (2) period of time of PDPs and (3) concerns identified by mathematics teachers themselves .The results also indicated significa nt inter- correlations among variables especially three measures of PDPs.