What is Happening in Ghanaian Junior High School Mathematics Classrooms?: A Look at Students’ Perception

Abstract

In recent times, there has been public outcry about students’ poor performance in mathematics in Ghana. Since available literature is replete with the fact that students’ perception of their mathematics classroom environment influences their participation in classroom activities and hence their mathematics achievement, this study was designed to examine how junior high school students perceived their mathematics classroom learning environment. A total of 350 eighth and ninth graders (i.e., junior high school forms two and three students) from four public and two private schools in a metropolitan community in southern Ghana participated in the study. The study adapted the What is Happening in This Class (WIHIC) questionnaire, a questionnaire designed to measure students’ perception of their classroom environment on four different subscales. The results revealed that, though in general, the perception of students were positive, ranging from sometimes to often, that of the public school students were relatively more positive than their private school counterparts in each of the subscales. Implications of this are discussed and recommendations for classroom teachers and future research are also presented.