Effect of class size on girls' academic performance in Science, Mathematics and Technology subjects

Musau, Lydia M.; Migosi, Joash A.

doi:10.1504/ijeed.2013.056013

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…One component of the strategy is the SEP which facilitates engagement between researchers from the KWTRP and more than 4,000 students from over 50 Kenyan public primary and secondary schools every year. The SEP was initiated in 2008 to draw from KWTRP's human and lab resources toward contributing to local school science education in a context where public secondary schools are characterized by large class sizes, poorly resourced laboratories ( 68 , 69 ), and according to local teachers, limited opportunities to learn about science. SEP activities have several aims.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating and Engaging: Using Participatory Video With Kenyan Secondary School Students to Explore Engagement With Health Research

Davies

High

Mwangome

et al. 2022

Front. Public Health

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BackgroundThe growing ethical requirement to engage communities with health research has yielded diversification in approaches and targeted audiences. Conventional approaches like community “town-hall meetings,” laboratory open-days and focus group discussions, have evolved into new methods and audiences such as community drama and school engagement with health research (SEHR) involving learning interactions between researchers and school students. While engagement practices are diversifying, evaluations of these initiatives are rare in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMIC). This article focuses on the use of Participatory Video (PV) to explore the influence of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme's (KWTRP) School Engagement Programme (SEP) on the views and understandings of science and research among Kenyan state secondary school students.MethodsTwelve male and twelve female students from four coeducational schools were provided with film-making kits (1 per school), and a one-day PV training workshop. They prepared 22 short films over 8 weeks depicting their experiences and views of research and engagement and conveying their career aspirations. Schools were selected based on prior SEP participation; two schools having experienced different engagement approaches, and the others with no prior school engagement. Study data comprised footage and participant observation notes.ResultsPV provided an opportunity to simultaneously engage and evaluate to inform practice. Through student-led filmmaking, PV stimulated conversations with students about research and engagement, enabling them to share their views in a way they felt was appropriate. These interactions offered an understanding of student gains from engagement, the depth of interaction required to address perceptions held about research and the potential unintended consequences of engagement. PV also provided insights into the context and complexity of life in which engagement is situated. Understanding this context is important because of its potential influence on participation in engagement activities. We draw on these insights to make two recommendations for school engagement practice. First is that PV can provide an enjoyable and insightful means of combining engagement with evaluation. Second, given that time for SEHR is competed for against other important curricular and extracurricular activities, SEHR practitioners must ensure that activities are as beneficial and enjoyable as possible to students.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating and Engaging: Using Participatory Video With Kenyan Secondary School Students to Explore Engagement With Health Research

Davies

High

Mwangome

et al. 2022

Front. Public Health

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The second motivation came from KWTRP researchers’ desire to draw on its existing human and laboratory resources to enhance local students’ educational experiences and provide opportunities to and learn about science 22 , 64 . The latter acknowledged the relative wealth and resource disparity between the state-of-the-art research institution and local public secondary schools, often characterised as having large class-sizes, poorly resourced laboratories 65 , 66 and infrequent opportunities for students to conduct practical science 65 . School science education, not only in Kenya, but generally, often presents an abstract and artificial depiction of ‘real-world’ science where everything takes place in the confines of the school laboratory 23 , 24 .…”

Section: Methodological Approach To Establishing a School Engagement mentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of a programme to engage school students with health research and science in Kenya

Davies¹,

Mwangome²,

Yeri³

et al. 2019

Wellcome Open Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Facilitating mutually-beneficial educational activities between researchers and school students is an increasingly popular way for research institutes to engage with communities who host health research, but these activities have rarely been formally examined as a community or public engagement approach in health research. The KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP) in Kilifi, Kenya, through a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach involving students, teachers, researchers and education stakeholders, has incorporated ‘school engagement’ as a key component into their community engagement (CE) strategy. School engagement activities at KWTRP aim at strengthening the ethical practice of the institution in two ways: through promoting an interest in science and research among school students as a form of benefit-sharing; and through creating forums for dialogue aimed at promoting mutual understanding between researchers and school students. In this article, we provide a background of CE in Kilifi and describe the diverse ways in which health researchers have engaged with communities and schools in different parts of the world. We then describe the way in which the KWTRP school engagement programme (SEP) was developed and scaled-up. We conclude with a discussion about the challenges, benefits and lessons learnt from the SEP implementation and scale-up in Kilifi, which can inform the establishment of SEPs in other settings.

show abstract

“…In education, there has been a perception that men are better suited for difficult subjects such as mathematics, while women are better suited for other subjects [10,30]. However, recent research suggests that this is not always true, as many studies have shown that girls perform better in school than boys in all major subjects, and they graduate from high school with higher grade point averages than their male peers [21,47]. Although some studies have reported gender-related differences in academic achievement, other studies have found no significant differences between males and females in mathematics performance [5,6].…”

Section: Gender and Academic Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating the Effect of Teacher Qualification on Students’ Performance in Mathematics Instruction in Asunafo North Municipality

Mensah,

Acheampong,

Ansu

et al. 2024

AIR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Mathematics has a positive impact on the world, but students' performance in the subject is declining. Many researchers believe that one of the causes of this decline is the lack of qualified teachers. To investigate this further, a study was conducted in the Asunafo North Municipality to examine the effect of teacher qualifications on students' performance in mathematics classrooms. A descriptive survey research design was utilized to conduct this study which included 76 respondents, consisting of 60 students (WASSCE candidates) and 16 final year mathematics teachers. This was done through a purposive sampling technique for the sample of teachers and a simple random sampling for the selecting of the WASSCE students. Data was collected through questionnaires and interviews, and analyzed using IBM SPSS version 23. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages, mean, and standard deviation were used, as well as paired samples T-test to answer the hypothesis testing. The results of the study showed that students taught by highly qualified teachers performed better than those taught by less qualified teachers. This indicates that teacher qualification has a significant impact on students' performance in mathematics. The study concludes that teacher qualification is a major factor affecting students' academic performance in mathematics. Based on the findings, it is recommended that education stakeholders in Ghana, including the Ministry of Education, should employ only qualified teachers who are graduates or masters’ holders with teaching qualifications to teach mathematics at the SHS level.

show abstract

Effect of class size on girls' academic performance in Science, Mathematics and Technology subjects

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Evaluating and Engaging: Using Participatory Video With Kenyan Secondary School Students to Explore Engagement With Health Research

Evaluating and Engaging: Using Participatory Video With Kenyan Secondary School Students to Explore Engagement With Health Research

Evolution of a programme to engage school students with health research and science in Kenya

Investigating the Effect of Teacher Qualification on Students’ Performance in Mathematics Instruction in Asunafo North Municipality

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About