IDENTIFICATION OF AREAS OF DIFFICULTY IN TEACHING UNIVERSAL BASIC EDUCATION (UBE) MATHEMATICS IN SOUTH-SOUTH NIGERIA

Some of the major problems that are of concern to stakeholders in education in South-South Nigeria in particular are the absence of teachers of basic mathematics and the quality of teachers at the public primary and junior secondary school levels in spite of well-thought out programmes of teacher preparation in Nigeria. Again for some peculiarities in South-South Nigeria, there are identifiable areas of difficulties in teaching mathematics traceable to the curriculum or the environment. These problems have also led to pupils’ and students poor performance in mathematics necessitated by negative attitudes to and loss of interest in mathematics. The identification of the areas of difficulties in teaching Universal Basic Education (UBE) Mathematics in South-South Nigeria is the concern of this research. This study therefore, sought to identify areas of difficulty in teaching mathematics at primary and Junior Secondary School levels in South-South Nigeria. Four research questions guided the study and two researchers-made instruments were used to collect data. For the purpose of data collection, stratified random sampling technique was used to get a sample of 1,998 teachers from three out of the six states in the area of study. To analyze data, mean and standard deviation statistical methods were used and the various areas of difficulty and reasons for such difficulties in teaching Mathematics were identified. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that appropriate facilities should be provided in schools and retraining programmes should be organized for teachers based on specific areas of difficulties.