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Gender Differences in Mathematics Performance Attributions Among First Year Students at National University of Lesotho: Implications for Access to and Performance in Mathematics

Personal factors tend to inhibit learners' opportunity to benefit from the provision of mathematics education and to achieve satisfactory performance in mathematics. Equity in the provision of such education is seen to be lacking if such factors relate significantly to one or the other of the demographic characteristics of a group of learners or of their schools. One of such factors relates to the reaction of the learner to his/her experience with this subject. According to Heider (1944), when we have a failing or successful experience, we may locate its origin in another person or thing, in fate or ourselves, and this might influence the way we relate to or perform in the subject in the future. Performance attribution in mathematics has been found in many populations to be gender related. To assess this for a population of 2000/2001 National University of Lesotho (NUL) first year students, attribution and performance data in mathematics were gathered from 563 students and then analysed using chi-square, independent t-test, and 2-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) statistical techniques. The results showed that attribution of mathematics performance among these students is significantly gender-dependent, and that males tended to attribute their performance to effort significantly more their female counterparts. Additionally, both gender and attribution were found to relate significantly to performance in the subject. These results are discussed, and recommendations made with regard to diluting such gender influence, and hence enhancing achievement and equity in the provision of mathematics education.

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Teachers' and Pupils' Scientific and Indigenous Knowledge of Natural Phenomena

ABSTRACTThe interface between school science and indigenous knowledge has until recently been ignored in curriculum development efforts throughout the world. However, in the last decade or so, for one reason or the other, a greater attention has been paid to this crucial subject. One obvious phenomenon forcing this subject to the fore perhaps, is the challenge of cultural identity in an era of rapid socio-economic and educational globalization. Today, science teachers in many a South African classroom is confronted with the enormous task of communicating science to pupils from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds. In fact, it might not be far fetched to suspect that both teachers and learners in South Africa as elsewhere, are faced with the massive challenge of “border crossing” (Aikenhead & Jegede, 1999) between school science and indigenous knowledge of diverse natural phenomena. The report presented in this paper seems to buttress this suspicion. An analysis of the responses of 40 science teachers and 92 primary and junior secondary school pupils in the Western Cape to eight fictitious stories about nature reveals the existence of both the scientific and the indigenous notions about nature. As expected, the teachers appear to learn more towards the scientific world view than their students. In certain cases there are similarities between the teachers' and their pupils' world views about nature while in others they are different. While some of the notions held by the subjects about nature are similar to that of science others are distinctly different. This paper provides a documentary evidence of the interplay between two distinct world views within the framework of critical theory. It attempts to explore the underlying mechanism of border crossing in terms of the so-called contiguity hypothesis as well as highlighted the physiological/logico-metalogical implications of the phenomenon of dualistic mentality for mass scientific and technological literacy or what has been termed, “public understanding of science and technology” in South Africa.

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Item Arrangement as a Strategy for Enhancing Quality in Assessment in Science Education

ABSTRACTPerformance in a series of real-life tasks tends to be maximized if such tasks are presented in some order from the least- to the most-demanding given the ability being tasked. Such arrangement enhances ease and objectivity at estimating the amount of ability expended to overcome a task, as well as the minimum level of ability demanded by each task before it could be overcomed without much extraneous influence from anxiety, demotivation, and waste of precious time by the person undertaking the task. In testing, it also makes it less difficult to determine the probability that an answer to a test item is guessed or copied during examination, or results from carelessness during examinee-by-item interaction.To test three hypotheses related to these views, performance and item data generated by administering 3 forms of a validated chemistry test, each with different item arrangements, to 461 randomly sampled senior secondary three (SS3) students from Akwa Ibom State in Nigeria were analysed using repeated measure and one-way ANOVA. It was found that item position in a test has significant influence on several person and item characteristics and hence influences the quality of assessment instruments. Based on these findings appropriate recommendations were made in an attempt to contribute solutions to this problem and to enhance adaptability of our testing procedures to practices supported by modern test theories.

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