Abstract:
The main purpose of this study was to determine the difficult areas in junior secondary school mathematics curriculum as perceived by teachers and students in Kebbi state. Six research questions and four null hypotheses guided the study. The design of the study was descriptive survey. The study was delineated to all public the junior secondary schools in Kebbi state. The population of the study was 91,610 respondents comprising of 520 mathematics teachers and 81094 students. The sample size of the study was 624 respondents (226 teachers & 398 students). The instrument used for data collection was Perception of Difficult Areas in Mathematics Questionnaire (PDAMQ) constructed by the researcher from the new mathematics curriculum for junior secondary schools. Three experts from the department of Science Education, University of Nigeria Nsukka validated the instrument. The instrument was trial-tested using 20 respondents and the reliability coefficients of the instrument for clusters A to E were 0.88, 0.91, 0.85, 0.93 and 0.90 respectively. The instrument for data collection was administered face-to-face with the help of 5 research assistants in each of the sampled Education Zones. Mean and Standard deviations were used to answer the research questions while t-test statistic was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result of the study among others showed that teachers perceived junior mathematics curricular contents for JSSI, JSSII and JSSIII to be easy. The result of the study also showed that the JSS I and JSS II students perceived junior secondary school mathematics curriculum to be easy, while the JSSIII students perceived the mathematics curriculum to be difficult, however, there was no significant difference in the mean perception of male and female mathematics teachers on the areas of difficulties in the junior secondary school mathematics curriculum. Result also showed that there was a significant difference in the mean perception of qualified and unqualified mathematics teachers on the areas of difficulties in the junior secondary school mathematics curriculum. The implication of the findings were highlighted and it was recommended among other things that since the finding of the study showed that teachers perceived junior mathematics curriculum for JSSI, JSSII and JSSIII as easy, regular workshop, seminars and probably in-service training should be organized for the teachers as an avenue to learn more on how best the Mathematics curriculum for Junior Secondary School can be implemented. The limitations of the study were highlighted and suggestions were made for further research.
