Comparative Study of Private and Government Secondary School Students' Attitudes Toward Mathematics and Their Achievement: The Case of Adama City
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Date
2007-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to compare private and government school
students' attitudes toward mathematics and their achievement in the first
cycle secondary (Grades 9-10) schools in Adama city. One hundred ninetyseven
subjects (99 males and 98 females) were randomly selected from
one government and one private school in Adama city. An attitude scale
and mathematics achievement tests were employed to gather the data.
Analysis of t-test and Pearson correlation were employed on the data. The
results indicate that there is a significant (p <0.05) difference in attitudes
toward mathematics between private and government first cycle
secondary school students in favor of government, but there IS no
significant (p>0.05) difference in attitudes toward mathematics between
male and female students. Similarly, there isa significant (p <0.05)
difference in mathematics achievement between private and government
first cycle secondary school students in favor of private school s tudents,
and als o a significant (p<0.05) difference was found in mathematics
achievement between male and f emale students in favor of males. In the
case of comparing students' attitudes and mathematics achievement,
positive but very low correlation (r=0.14) was observed in the first cycle
secondary school. This, however, does not mean that there is statistically
significant correlation between attitudes toward mathematics and
mathematics achievement. That is why the government school stude nts
have positive attitudes, but lower achievement than that of private school
students while private school students have negative attitudes, but higher
achie vement than that of government school students. It was thus
concluded that government school students have better attitudes toward
mathematics than the private school students, while private school
students have better achievement in mathematics than those of the
government school students.
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Comparative Study of Private