A Study of Influence of Mother-Tongue, Teacher's Qualification, Gender and Experience on Performance in Primary School Mathematics in Katsina State.

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of the mother-tongue, teacher’s qualification, Gender and Experience on the pupils’ performance in primary school mathematics in Katsina State. The study employed a pre-test and post-test quasi-experimental and control group design. The population of the study is 71,351 primary four pupils of which 50,265 are male and 21,086 are female. In this research random sampling were adopted to select the four schools used in experimental and control group, while stratified random sampling were used to select boys and girls. The sample of the study consisted of 200 primary school pupils (122 boys, 78 girls) in Charanchi and Rimi Local Government in Katsina State. The subjects were classified into two groups. One experimental and the other as control. Both groups participated in the pre-test and post-test those were administered in the data collection process. Five hypotheses were tested in the study. The data obtained were analyzed at a significant level of P <0.05 using t-test. The major findings from the study were that (1). The use of mother tongue as medium of instruction enhanced the performance of pupils in Primary School Mathematics (2) Teacher’s experience has an impact on pupils’ performance in primary school mathematics. (3) Teacher’s qualification and gender were not a significant factor in determining the performance of pupils in Mathematics. On the basis of these findings,
recommendations were made.

Keywords: Mother- tongue, Teacher’s qualification, Gender, Experience, Pupil’s performance, Mathematics.