Enhancement of learner's performance in geometry at secondary schools in Vhembe District of the Limpopo Province

Abstract

Learning Geometry has been identified as an area of Mathematics that poses various problems for many secondary school learners’. Many learners’ fail to develop an adequate understanding of geometrical concepts and to demonstrate good reasoning and problem solving skills. Poor performance of learners’ in Euclidian Geometry has been a concern to Mathematics teachers, parents and government. The purpose of this study was to enhance learners’ performance in Euclidian Geometry as a branch of Mathematics in the FET band of secondary schools. The research question was: What factors facilitate the enhancement of learners’ performance in Euclidian Geometry in the FET band of secondary schools? The study adopted the mixed methods design. The population were all the FET band learners who chose Mathematics as a field of study at secondary schools in Nzhelele East Circuit. Purposive sampling was used to select participants who contributed to qualitative data. For quantitative data, clusters and random sampling methods were used to select learners who participated in the study. The sample consisted of 6 school principals, 6 heads of departments and 6 teachers. These groups of people participated in the interviews. Nine schools were sampled from the population and questionnaires were administered to 405 learners of which 45 were randomly selected from each school and 15 learners were randomly selected from each grade level. Thematic analysis was used to analyze qualitative data and the SPSS Version 22 was employed to analyze quantitative data. The data collected revealed the causes of poor performance in Geometry at Grades 10-12. The results of this study described how learners in Grades 10-12 could improve their performance in Geometry.