Teaching and learning of pre-calculus: an insights of educators

Abstract

The high-failure of Calculus courses has bring dilemma to the educators worldwide. This study has focus on teaching and learning of Pre-Calculus, a fundamental course for higher level Calculus courses. A well-designed questionnaire was distributed to all respondents to find the difficulties faced by both lecturers and students from the insights of the educators. From the survey, we find that lecturers confronted difficulties in teaching Pre-calculus by the lack of basic and visualization skills among students. They find that students’ performance are moderate since they tend to memorize, instead of understand the concept. Indeed, most of them agree that the major problem of students is the poor foundation in basic Calculus. Therefore, they have suggested three ideas which are changes of mindset among students, consult lecturers whenever students have problems and remedial class for the weak students.

Keywords: pre-calculus; high-failure rate; teaching and learning; lecturers’ insights.