VIEWS AND CHALLENGES IN TEACHING MATHEMATICS OF ELEMENTARY TEACHERS IN RURAL AND URBAN SCHOOL DISTRICTS

Abstract

This research investigates teachers' views and challenges in mathematics teaching, the purpose of the research was two folds: 1) To investigate elementary teachers in Rural and Urban School Districts views of teaching mathematics when categorize according to the following: a) Basic Skills Practice, b) Discovery (Active) View, c) Teacher Designed Curriculum, d) Text Driven Curriculum, e) Many Methods Encouraged, f) Cooperative Learning View; and 2) To examine the challenges encountered by the elementary teachers in Rural and Urban School districts in teaching mathematics. Descriptive – survey research were used in gathering the necessary data. A total of one hundred fifty (150) mathematics teachers were chosen from various elementary schools in both urban and rural school districts through purposive sampling. Data were generated from closed ended survey questionnaire rating sheet with a five point Likert scale. The weighted Mean for Views and identified sources of challenges or obstacles were then calculated and was given equivalent descriptions and explained descriptively. Findings revealed both urban and rural school districts favored the many methods view when it came to there dominate views of teaching mathematics with a computed Mean of M=4.47 for Rural school districts and M=4.83 for Urban school districts. Results also revealed that the process of integrating technology in mathematics classrooms posed various types of challenges for teachers in rural district in their daily teaching process for the mathematics subject