Sunday Adebola Ifamuyiwa (Ph.D)
is a Lecturer in the Department of Curriculum Studies and Instructional
Technology at the Olabisi Onabanjos University, Nigeria. His area of
specialization and research focus is mathematics education and curriculum
studies at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels. He has taught courses in
mathematics, curriculum studies, mathematics education methodology and
techniques, and mathematics evaluation methods. E. mail:
Saji_38@yahoo.com
Sunday A Ifamuyiwa (Ph.D).
Department of Curriculum Studies and Instructional Technology
The Nigerian
educational system took its root from the traditional system of the pre-colonial
era. This was a period of indigenous education in which traditional education
activities were practiced in various vocations like farming, weaving,
blacksmithing, pot making, traditional medicine, hunting, etc. Learning at that
time was characterized by apprenticeship and much of unrealized and unexplained
science and technology were practiced. There was no formal curriculum but the
training was relevant to the needs of the society. Some authors described the
training as somehow primitive and localized (Ajeyalemi, 2008), because it was
informal.
This study
investigated teachers’ and students’ patterns of interaction in the course of
teaching mathematics in some selected secondary schools in Ogun State, Nigeria.
Twenty mathematics teachers made up of ten male and ten female teachers and
their students, chosen from four secondary schools in Ijebu-Ode Township
using the purposive sampling technique, participated in the study. The modified
five minutes interaction (F.M.I) section of the IEA classroom environment study
served as the coding instrument. Frequency counts; simple percentages and
chi-square analysis were used to analyze the data collected in the study. The
result indicated that the teaching of mathematics in the selected schools has
not completely divorced itself from the historical antecedents in which
mathematics classrooms was dominated by teacher instruction with little or no
student participation in verbal interaction and skill demonstration. There were
significant differences between the interaction behaviours of male and female
teachers with respect to instruction, questioning, student’s responses and
teachers’ feedback. The findings were discussed stressing the educational
implications. Mathematics teachers were advised to encourage group work among
students and to ask questions that will enhance students’ participation in
mathematics teaching.
