Mathematics Teacher's Belief on Students' Low Achievements at Junior Secondary Level of Education in Sri Lanka and Their Implications for School Based Teacher Development (SBTD)

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to understand the teachers’ beliefs on students’ low achievement in mathematics at junior secondary level of education and their suggested strategies for improvement of student achievements. A qualitative approach was used to investigate three research questions: (a) what are the beliefs of teachers towards students’ low achievement in mathematics? (b) What strategies do they implement or suggest for improving achievements? (c) What are the implications of their beliefs for policy, practice, and research? Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from fifty mathematics teachers selected from a stratified random sample of fifty schools in the Central Province of Sri Lanka. Three main themes of teachers’ beliefs about students’ low achievement emerged in the analysis of data. First, students’ factors affecting mathematics achievements, mainly focused on students’ interests, attitudes and motivations, prior knowledge, language ability and cognitive skills such as memory, attention, logical thinking and reasoning. Second, factors pertaining to students’ home environment, which included parent’s education level, their attitudes towards education and level of intelligence. Third, factors related to school, which included the lack of human and physical resources, teacher’s workload, and the support of the principal. Most of the teacher’s belief include their current and suggested strategies included providing more physical resources such as math laboratories, more space and technology in the classroom, providing adequate time and opportunities to interact with other mathematics teachers, opportunities to share in-service training experiences, increasing frequency of testing, providing practice tests, conducting extra classes and the use of new teaching methods. Thus, the teachers’ beliefs of students’ low achievement appear to be mostly focused on aspects that can be addressed at the school levels through classroom-based action research and SBTD. (This study is funded by the AHEAD operation of the Ministry of Higher education, Sri Lanka and the World Bank).