CONTENT ANALYSIS OF OLD AND NEW GRADE NINE MATHEMATICS TEXT BOOKS FOR MATHEMATICAL LITERACY THEMES COVERAGE

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent of the mathematics literacy (ML) themes coverage in both the old and the new grade nine mathematics textbooks and to evaluate changes that were made in the new grade nine mathematics textbook with respect to the old grade nine mathematics in terms of the four ML themes coverage. In this study six experienced staffs were selected as rater purposively. For content analysis items were categorized in four ML themes namely; Quantity (Theme I); Space and shape (Theme II); Change and relationship (Theme III); and Uncertainty (Theme IV). From the old textbook, objectives, exercises, class activities and miscellaneous exercises were selected for this study. In the new textbook, objectives, exercises, class activities, miscellaneous exercises, group work and review exercises were selected for the study. There was discussion on the code book with senior academic staffs to validate it and a code book was developed and compiled. Data were collected qualitative and quantitatively and to do this analyzed using descriptive statistics (chisquare, x 2 tested at significant level of 0.05). Reliability in this study was determined by using Fleiss generalized Kappa statistic. The results from the analysis of the old grade nine textbook shows that this textbook had mostly emphasized on change and relationship (62.00%). The second and third most emphasized themes covered were Quantity (25.74%) and space and shape (9.67%). This textbook, however, has less emphasized to the uncertainty theme of ML (2.49%). The result from the analysis of the new grade nine mathematic textbook had shown that the change and relationship was the most emphasized theme (49.0%), the second and third most emphasized themes were Uncertainty (27.47%) and quantity (19.66%) but it had emphasized less on space and shape (3.2%) themes of ML. As well, the chi-square test revealed that there is significance difference between the old and new text books in terms of the four ML themes coverage. It was then concluded that, even though there were imbalances in ML themes coverage in both text books; the new text book is concerned with the capacities of students to analyses, reason, and communicates, ideas effectively as they pose, formulate, solve and interpret mathematics in a variety of situations This agrees with the 2009 educational reform brought a shift of emphasis on practice based learning rather than solely theoretical learning. That is, printed educational materials must encourage students’ independent learning via practices, inquiry, discovery, and problem solving as well as innovation practices to solve the real life problems.