Responding to needs of low achievers in Mathematics

4.MAY.07

EDITOR: “Many mathematics teachers consider teaching the low achievers an uninspiring and unimportant task. In this we are avoiding just those students who need us most…The low achiever will always be with us. If we do something for them in school now, we may be helping them to avoid problems in their adult years. Many of them have latent talents that can and should be developed” (Johnson & Rising 1972; p.339).{{more}}

Deducing from the above statements, one gets the picture that:

Low attainers form an integral part of the school mathematics student community;

Low attainers have needs for caring teachers;

Low attainers have the ability to learn and do want to learn;

When one analyses these issues, it seems difficult not to ask: how could the curriculum respond, at the classroom level, to meet the needs of low attainers. To do so, mathematics teachers, might find it useful to first reflect on the following the questions `who are low attainers’.

Low attainers may well be referred to, as that set of students amongst any group of learners whose continuous performance placed them in, say, the bottom thirty or twenty percentile. Accordingly, while there might be instances of a whole class of low attainers, it might still be possible to find low attainers among different sets of students, even where students are grouped according to ability. Some common causes of low attainment as cited by Denvir, Stolz & Brown (1982) include: physical defects, emotional and behavioural problems, attitude to learning mathematics, inappropriate teaching, lack of continuity, general slowness in learning, poor reading, gaps in education caused by absenteeism and low self-confidence and self-concept.

Scrutinizing this list of possible causes of low mathematics attainment suggests that the fundamental problems with regards to low attaining students resides in such students’

Negative attitude to the subject (developed not in a short period of time, but over several years of failure to meet teachers’ requirements);

Lack of faith in their teachers’ ability/ willingness to understand and assist them.

Recently, I had the opportunity to read the expressed views of a group of low attaining mathematics students. This is an unedited sample of what two students wrote.

Student 1

I don’t like mathematics. This boring subject is too hard. All these work will burst your brain. eg How can one man or child keep so much information in is brain, he will die of mathematical aids. Maths is also boring because of whom is teaching it. They will lazy up the subject and make you sleep in class. After that they will say you are lazy and you don’t want to do any work.

Student 2

I hate math. Maths stinks maths is not for me. The teacher they are so mean they just teach math so ugly I don’t understand they make it look so hard. I am so weak in maths I wonder who invented it and why maths is a brain buster…

I therefore find it difficult to agree with the general lament often made by some persons that low mathematically attaining students are generally lazy; often do not think; and seldom put enough effort into their work. My own belief, based on observations of classroom exchanges, is that outside of a minority of students whose low mathematics attainment may be due to some physical or mental defects, lack of confidence in their ability to do mathematics is the major problem affecting these students’ attainment. In fact, the Reform of Secondary Education Curriculum – Jamaica (1998) states, “many of the students who have experiences of failing mathematics not only have basic weaknesses and gaps in their knowledge, but have feelings of worthlessness and low self-concept.”

Against this understanding, it might be a good engagement for those of us who are concerned with raising the standard of low attainers to first challenge ourselves to reflect on the following question. Is Low attainment in mathematics a cause or an effect? It is important that such reflection be urgently and carefully undertaken, for the very response to this question could well determine the extent to which one’s approach to teaching any such group of students can be deemed effective.

Kenneth Holder