Assessing Students’ Mathematics Interests and Perceived Teacher Effectiveness in Rural Communities: Implications for Rural Mathematics Education

Abstract

Students in rural areas in developing nations are at risk of under-performing and dropping out of school. This worsens when it comes to  science subjects such as mathematics. Sustaining their mathematics interests demands understanding the factors that impact their  mathematics learning outcomes. Our study adopted a cross-sectional survey research design to examine the association between  teacher effectiveness and rural students’ mathematics interests. Our sample comprised 205 randomly sampled secondary school  students from six community schools in Awka, Anambra State, Nigeria. Our findings revealed that all the components of teacher  effectiveness were positively related to students’ mathematics interests. After controlling for gender, the regression analysis revealed  that the dimensions of teacher effectiveness had a joint significant association with students’ mathematics interests, with the student- teacher dimension having the greatest predictive capacity on students’ mathematics interests. We concluded that affective aspects of  teacher effectiveness are crucial for stimulating rural students’ interest in mathematics.