Relationship between Entry Level, Attitude and Students’ Performance in Mathematics in Public Secondary Schools in Kisumu East District, Kenya

Abstract

— Mathematics is one of the core subjects in secondary school curriculum. Performance in the subject is crucial for students’ admission to scientific and technological professions.However, there has been persistent poor performance in the subject particularly in Kisumu East District as revealed by the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination results for the years 2006 to 2008 with mean scores of 3.2282, 3.3691 and 4.0660 respectively.This may deny students access to the competitive professions. Factors contributing to this poor performance have not been exhaustively studied. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between students’ entry level, attitude towards mathematics and performance in mathematics.The studywas conducted in public secondary schools in Kisumu East District and employed correlation design in which the dependent variable was performance and independent variables were entry level and attitude. The study sample was 986 Form 4 students, representing 33% of the population. Data collection instruments were students Questionnaire(SQ) and Mathematics Test(MT).Quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Regression analysis wasrun to determine the relationship between the dependent and independent variables. The findings established that the two independent variables had significant effect on performance in MT for both girls and boys. Based on the results it is advisable that performance of students at KCPE to be considered during intake to Form 1,girls’ attitude towards mathematic content and boys’ attitude towards methods of teaching should be enhanced by mathematics teachers. Index Terms— Attitude, Entry level, Form 4 students, Mathematics curriculum,Performance.