COMPARISON OF STUDENTS’ LEARNING ACHIEVEMENTS IN THE SUBJECT OF MATHEMATICS TAUGHT BY TRAINED TEACHERS AND UNTRAINED TEACHERS AT PRIMARY LEVEL

Teacher training programs are the initiatives to enhance teachers’ competencies and develop their skill to teach effectively and create learning environment in which students feel free and satisfied to learn and cooperate with the teacher. The main purpose of the study was to find out the impact of in-service training imparted to primary school teachers in the subject of mathematics. 48 primary schools were taken as sample from Faisalabad. Among these, teachers of 24 schools were imparted in-service training and others were not. 35 students were taken as sample from each school. An achievement test was constructed as research tool and validated through pilot testing by determining difficulty level, discrimination index and reliability. Test was further divided into 11 dimensions conceptual understanding, procedural knowledge, problem solving, logical part, number sense properties & operations, factors & multiples, fractions, measurement, geometry, information handling and over all. After getting the achievement test from the students test was marked and tabulated. SPSS XII was used for data analysis. Independent sample t-test was used to find out whether there existed a significant difference between the achievements of the two groups. The study reveals that the students who were taught by the trained teachers are significantly better than those taught by untrained teachers on conceptual understanding, procedural knowledge, problem solving, number sense properties & operations, factors & multiples, fractions, measurement, geometry and over all. On the other hand, there was no significant difference on logical part and information handling. On the basis of this study, some recommendations were made to improve teacher training programs at primary level.