Difficulties in teaching senior high school General Mathematics: Basis for training design

Abstract

The study investigated the difficulties encountered by Grade 11 teachers in teaching Senior High School General Mathematics, the reasons for the problems, and the strategies employed by teachers in overcoming the challenges with an end view of developing training design. The sequential explanatory mixed methods design was used in the study with the aid of a questionnaire checklist and an interview to validate the answers generated by the questionnaires. The study revealed that the challenges in teaching emerged due to time constraints and mastery issues of contents. Though teachers were pedagogically and technologically equipped to teach the course, however, some have poor time management and link to peers to share the best strategies to cope with the problems. Hence, training, as well as seminars and workshops for the unmastered competencies/contents and the competencies with no strategies applied to deal with the difficulties in teaching, are to be provided to Grade 11 General Mathematics teachers by implementing the training design developed by the researchers. 

Keywords: Difficulties, reasons, strategies, training design