Effects of teachers’ utilisation of tiered home assignment on students’ achievements in mathematics

Abstract

This research discusses the effect of Tiered Mathematics Home Assignments (T.M.H.A.) on the academic achievements of junior secondary school students. Gone are the days when only the students who could not answer mathematics questions correctly in the classroom were given assignments to improve their competence in the subject. Mathematics assignments are now given to every student in order to minimize the rate of failure. However, not all mathematics teachers can effectively construct appropriate assignments which can improve the students’ understanding of the subject. 631 students from 9 junior secondary schools (JSS) in Lagos took part in this study. The results revealed significant interaction effects of T.M.H.A. on students’ ability levels and achievement in mathematics. During this study, we observed that students who were given relevant home assignments (as per T.M.H.A.) had improve their competence in the subject by a higher amount than those who were exposed only to regular assignments. The results also show that there is a significant effect of gender on students’ mathematics achievement and ability levels. Similarly, the findings show that there is a significant effect of school type on students’ mathematics achievement and ability levels. In general, male students tend to perform better than female students and students from private schools performed slightly better. It was also observed that some mathematics teachers paid little attention to the purpose, design and standard of the mathematics homework assigned to the students. Thus, we recommended that a course on differentiated M.H.A. (Mathematics Home Assignment) should be included in the teachers’ training mathematics curriculum and frequent seminars should be organized for teachers by the school administrators on the effective use of T.M.H.A.