ASSESSMENT OF MAJOR FACTORS INFLUENCING ACHIEVEMENT OF FEMALE STUDENTS IN MATHEMATICS IN PREPARATORY SCHOOLS OF DIRE DAWA CITY ADMINSTRATION.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find out Assessment of major factors influencing achievement of female students in Mathematics in preparatory schools of Dire Dawa city administration. To address this, the study investigated whether there are any significant influencing factors related to teachers, parent, social media, excessive watching on Kana TV, and environment related factors on achievement of female students in Mathematics. It also observed any significant difference among the factors that certainly affect female student’s achievement. To attain this objective, three governmental preparatory schools in Dire Dawa city Administration were selected purposively due to their geographical location and their accommodation of large number of female students relative to other preparatory schools. To undertake the study, descriptive survey method was used. 223 preparatory female students were selected by stratified random sampling from each school, where as simple random sampling method was employed for the selection from each section (class) and six Mathematics teachers (4 male and 2 female), three unit leaders, three vice directors and two supervisors of the school were selected by simple random sampling techniques. Questionnaires, interviews and focused group discussion as well as document analysis were used as main tools. Descriptive and inferential statistics were applied for data analysis. The results of the data analysis were presented using frequency, percentage, standard deviation, correlations & Regression analysis. This study concluded that teachers-related factors are disinterest & irresponsibility of mathematics teachers, work load, lack of feed back to home work & class work, lack of clarity of language and lack of using compatibly methodology. Environment related factors were shortage of water lit rant, lack of reference material in girl’s library, hotel near to school and school distance from their home. Parent related factors were lack of income, the relation between parents &mathematics teacher and a shortage of time to assess their activities. The social media related factors were killing of their time, decreasing their study interest and it pushed bad practicing like drug abuse. On the other hand except for parent related factors, there was a strong positive significant correlation between each factor at 0.01 level of significance. In addition to this from the regression model kana TV was the most dominant factors that affected female student’s achievement in mathematics. Generally the researcher was recommended research to be done in future on identifying female student individual factors that makes them fail in mathematics while performing better in other subjects such as English. The research must also be conducted on individual teacher factors that affect their teaching practice to the extent female students are poorly performing in mathematics.