Impact of perceptions of senior high school students’ mathematics performance in the Birim central municipality of Ghana

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate students‘ perception of mathematics in senior high schools and its impact on academic performance. The study examines the factors that influence these perceptions and finds contextual factors that underpin innovative mathematics teaching and learning in senior high schools in Ghana. Based on the Social learning theory of Albert Bandura, the study centred on Two hundred ten (210) students from three senior high schools in the Birim Central Municipality. The study was approached quantitatively and based on the positivist paradigm. Structured interviews with Likert-scale responses were used to collect data. The items on the questionnaire were categorised and additively indexed into five variables. Multiple linear regression was used to analyse the first objective followed by Pearson correlation to assess the impact of perception on academic performance in mathematics. The findings in this study according to the data presented argued the students' perception must have a great significance to the students' academic performance in mathematics. The student's socioeconomic background, teacher pedagogy, and mastery of the subject matter all play significant roles in the students‘ perception of mathematics. A positive or negative perception will yield a low or high performance of students in mathematics. The study recommended that mathematics teachers must be proactive in providing a fear-free environment for the teaching and learning of mathematics in secondary schools. Furthermore, teachers, school authorities, and parents have the responsibility of helping students overcome negative perceptions about mathematics from the early stages of their educational lives.