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CHALLENGES IN MATHEMATICS LEARNING: A STUDY FROM
SCHOOL STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVE
Mohd Rustam Mohd Rameli *1, Azlina Mohd Kosnin2,
1,2Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, MALAYSIA.
*mohdrustam98@gmail.com, p-azlina@utm.my
ABSTRACT
Students’ mathematics performance is one of the main concerns in mathematics education.
Nevertheless, many students perceive mathematics as one of the difficult core subjects to be learned.
This negative thinking can be due to many factors that hinder their mathematics learning. To get a
better picture of the hindering elements in students’ learning, this study was therefore conducted to
explore the challenges, obstacles and difficulties experienced by students in the process of
mathematics learning. A qualitative research using case study design was employed. A total of 150
secondary school students comprise of form four and form two students were selected through
stratified random sampling technique to complete an open ended questionnaire. The respondents were
required to give their response on the challenges they encounter in learning mathematics. Content
analysis was carried out by identifying the themes as the major sources of challenges, obstacles and
difficulties. The frequency and percentage for each of the identified sources of challenges, obstacles
and difficulties were then calculated. Results indicated that the sources of challenges can be classified
into five main themes and thirteen sub themes: a) self-factors (negative perception, low self-
regulation), b) teachers (behaviors, practices, characteristics) c) parents (lack of cognitive, emotional
and financial support) d) friends (negative attitudes, behaviors, lack of support) and e) others factors
(nature of math and assessment pressure). The results of this study have great implications for
practitioners and also researchers in assisting students to deal with their challenges, obstacles and
difficulties in daily school life specifically in learning mathematics.
KEYWORDS: Challenges; Nature of math; Assessment pressure
INTRODUCTION:
Mathematics has always been given special attention in school as the nature of the subject is
related to many other fields and disciplines. Moreover, students’ mathematics achievement has often
been the focus and is seen as a critical global issue in many countries. Besides being perceived as a
tough subject, problems in mathematics learning has also been related to the lack of regulation skills
among students in learning math. Self-regulation is a broad construct which covers before, during and
after phases learning. Self-regulation in learning is related to the 21th century of learning competency
(Wolters, 2010) thus students who are not regulated will face difficulty to overcome the obstructions
or challenges they face while learning.
The rapid changes of the education system and delivery method give a huge impact to students.
This situation requires students to learn effectively and in a more self-directed manner (Winters,
Greene & Costich, 2008). To achieve this, students need to be trained on how to enhance their skills
to choose the most appropriate learning strategy (Azevedo & Cornley, 2004). Failure of doing so will
affect students’ motivation to learn and eventually might diminish their interest to learn. Motivation
is a very important element in the learning process as it is an inducer and propeller for one to do a
task successfully. Therefore, motivation is essential for an individual to successfully face challenges
in academic setting. Moreover, motivation will be used by students as the attribution or determinant
to their behavior in learning and performance. Behaviors that are related to academic motivation such
as the desire to do difficult tasks and stay longer in difficult situations will be the determinant for
students’ ability in facing daily school life challenges (Masaali, 2007).
Based on the above mentioned statements, the current study was conducted to explore the
daily challenges faced by students in the process of learning mathematics. This challenges also can
be obstruction and difficulties experienced by students. This is significant due to the nature of
advancement of current mathematics education, delivery system and also the elements that have
potentials to hinder students’ mathematics learning progress as discussed above.
METHODOLOGY:
This qualitative study employed case study design which explores the challenges in learning
mathematics among secondary school students. This study involved 80 Form 2 students (age=13 years
old) and 70 Form 4 students (age=16 years old) who were selected by using stratified random
sampling technique. The respondents were required to provide their response on the challenges they
faced in learning mathematics. In the context of this study, the challenges also refer to the obstacles
and difficulties they experienced in the daily mathematics learning process inside or outside the
classroom. The respondents were given 40 minutes to write down their answers to one general open-
ended question regarding the challenges they faced throughout their mathematics learning process.
Discussion was not allowed among students to ensure the independency of the students’ response.
The responses were classified by using content analysis. The content analysis was first
conducted by generating initial code for all the responses. Then, potential themes and sub themes
were identified. Reviewing the themes and sub themes were then carried out to check whether they
align with the coded extracts. Lastly, the themes and sub themes were refined until specific and final
themes and sub themes were confirmed.
RESULTS:
After finalising the categorization, the results of content analysis indicated that the responses
could be classified into five main themes and thirteen sub themes: a) self-factors (negative perception,
low self-regulation), b) teachers (behaviors, practices, characteristics) c) parents (lack of cognitive,
emotional and financial support) d) friends (negative attitudes, behaviors, lack of support) and e)
others factors (nature of math and assessment pressure). The overall frequency and percentage for
each of the challenges were then calculated.
One of the themes identified was about self-factors as the source of challenges in learning
mathematics. There were 13 main categories of challenges mentioned by the students for this factor.
These categories could be classified into two sub themes which are negative perception (seven
categories) and low self-regulation (six categories) (Table 1). Negative perception is referred to
negative self-interpretation towards stimulus that related to mathematics based on students’ prior
knowledge (e.g:“I really hate math since primary school”; “Disliking math is my inborn characteristic”).
Meanwhile, self-regulation is referred as students’ learning process that includes the thinking,
controlling, monitoring and evaluating elements (e.g:“I will easily feeling frustrated when no one can help me
when I failed to solve math problem”)
Table 1. Descriptive analysis on the challenges experienced by the students for the themes related to
self-factors
Theme
Sub
Themes
Categories
f (%)
Self-
Factors
Negative
Perception
1-Feeling sleepy while learning Math
18 (12)
2-Feeling bored while learning Math
21 (14)
3-No/lack of interest (nature)
48 (32)
4-Lack of focus (do something else when the teacher teaches in front of the class)
24 (16)
5-Lazy to do Math revision/task/exercise/seek help when facing difficulty
56 (37)
6-Perceived Math as too difficult
23 (15)
7-Perceived Math as confusing
15 (10)
Low Self-
Regulation
1-Difficulty in doing Math exercise (without full help from others)
6 (0.04)
2-Poor time management
24 (16)
3-Lack of motivation
20 (13)
4-Easily forget
14 (12)
5-Always careless when doing Math exercises
22 (15)
6-Do not know/understand the way of answering question
27 (18)
Out of the 13 categories for the themes of self-factors, the most frequent category of challenges
stated was lazy to do math revision, tasks, exercises or seeking help when facing difficulty (f=56,
37%). No or lack of interest was also mentioned a lot by the students (f=48, 32%). Besides, the third
highest frequent category was students do not know or understand the way of answering certain math
questions (f=27, 18%).
Teacher was another sources of challenges stated by students. A total of 15 categories of
challenges related to teachers which were classified into three sub themes. Three categories falls into
teacher behaviors sub themes while ten and two categories were grouped into teacher teaching
practices and teacher characteristics sub themes respectively (Table 2). Teacher behaviors are the
behaviors that shown by teacher to the students including negative actions and negative talks (e.g:
“my math teacher always absent and not enter the class”) while teacher teaching practices related to teacher’s
regular behaviors during the teaching process that could affect students’ learning (e.g: “math teacher
teach as fast as 800 km/hrs. My teacher is kind but bad tempered. She gives too much homework. Too much! It is NOT an
excuse but this is reality”; “when teacher gives difficult math homework, the teacher only allowed students to choose
three questions for him/her to answer or explain. THAT IS NOT FAIR”). Lastly, teacher characteristics are teacher
personality and physical appearance (e.g: “my math teacher always showed his fierce face to us and never make
a joke with us. Such a boring teacher”)
Table 2. Descriptive analysis on the challenges experienced by the students for the themes related to
teacher
Theme
Sub Themes
Categories
f (%)
Teacher
Teacher
Behaviors
1-Scold their students when students failed in evaluation (test, exam)
32 (21)
2-Do not bother those who are not good in Math
10 (0.1)
3-Teachers do not enter the class
15 (10)
Teacher
Teaching
Practices
1-Teach too fast
60 (40)
2-Give too much homework
72 (48)
3-Teacher limits the number of questions that students can ask whenever
the students face difficulties in Math
6 (0.04)
4-Do not explain difficult questions
20 (13)
5-Teaching materials are not attractive
37 (25)
6-Language barrier
13 (0.1)
7-Teach in a boring way
37 (25)
8-Teachers/school have high expectations on students (Grade A, uphold
teaches/school standard)
52 (35)
9-Students do not understand the technique of teaching
10-Fail to make students understand (do not give explanation; even when
teachers explain difficult solutions but they fail to notice that there are
students who still cannot understand)
54 (36)
Teacher
Characteristics
1-Too serious while teaching and do not show any sense of humor (can)
22 (15)
2-Very fierce (always scold students)
26 (17)
The highest frequency among the 15 categories was about the burden felt by students by
having too many homework or mathematical tasks given by their teachers (f=72, 48%). The second
major categories experienced by the respondents was related to the pace of teachers’ delivery. They
stated that their teacher taught very fast. As a consequence, they do not have ample time to copy all
the notes and also unable to digest the information given (f=60, 40%). Even worse, some students
complaint that their teachers failed to make them understand some lesson (f=54, 36%) due to the lack
of explanation given. In addition, even the teacher has explained the difficult question but they failed
to notice that there are students who still cannot understand it.
The next source of challenges is from parents or family. There were six categories mentioned
in the responses. Four categories were grouped into lack of cognitive support sub themes while the
other two categories were sub themed into lack of emotional support and lack of financial support
respectively (Table 3). Cognitive support is an assistance in the form of ability construction and self-
development (e.g: “my parents always wanted me to get straight A’s. If I failed to do so, I will be scolded and caned”;
“my parents push me to score at least grade B because they want to protect the family honor (as if)). Besides,
emotional support is an assistance in the form of feeling and affective (e.g: “my parents sometimes compare
my math performance with others. But when I ask the person whom my mother compared to, he replied by saying that “I
have to do so even I am not willing/sincere. It is just because to avoid from being scolded. I am scared because my father
is very fierce”; “my parents always ask me to do the best in math!! It makes me stressful. My family always ask me to
follow some idols and said this and that. However I feel weaker/less motivated when listening to the views”; “my parents
are not good in math. In my family only my brother is ok in math but it is not so good. It is like inherited. Hehe. My family
members also like to compare me with others. This will not boost my spirit but it just makes me feel so annoyed!! Oh my!!
Bye-Bye!”). Lastly, financial support includes the assistance in the form of materials and study sources
(e.g: “ My parents not give me money to buy exercises books because they said it is enough for me to only do the exercises
in the text books and the exercises given by the teachers”)
Table 3. Descriptive analysis on the challenges experienced by the students for the themes related to
parent/family
Theme
Sub Themes
Categories
f (%)
Parent/
Family
Lack of Cognitive
Support/Cognitive
Pressure
1-Not good/expert in Math (when cannot answer question, ask their
child to ask others siblings or ask their child to understand on their own)
37 (25)
2-Have a high expectation (Grade A, protect family honor; force their
child to understand/become expert in Math; scold their child when
failed in evaluation (test, exam))
81 (54)
3-Tend to compare their child Math ability with others
36 (24)
4-Force to do Math exercise
28 (19)
Lack of Emotional
Support/Emotional
Pressure
1-Not a good listener
(child expression/feeling towards Math; perceived their child as not
giving attention during the Math class whenever their child cannot
answer Math exercises; pay more attention to the TV when their child
ask for a help
18 (12)
Lack of Financial
Support
1-Does not give their child money to buy reference book
6 (0.04)
The high expectation from the parents was the highest frequent category reported (f=81, 54%).
This implies that parents put too much emphasis on their children’s performance in math. Other than
to much emphasis on math performance, lack of ability in mathematics and inadequacy to assist their
children in mathematics is another frequent category of challenge faced by students (f=37, 25%).
Moreover, another difficulty faced by the students was that their parents tend to compare their math
ability with others which would make them feel stressful (f=36, 24%).
Friends were also identified as the sources of challenges in students’ learning mathematics
process. A total of 12 categories of challenges were mentioned by the students were related to friends.
These 12 categories were then classified into three sub themes which were negative attitude towards
math itself (three categories), negative behaviors or influences (seven categories) and also lack of
support (two categories) (Table 4). Negative attitude is referred as friends negative interpretation
towards stimulus related to mathematics based on their prior knowledge (e.g: “the problem is my friends
are also not good in math and dislikes math very much. Then cannot teach me when I have a math problem. Moreover, I
also dislike math and the devil always deceive me to copy my friends’ answer”). Meanwhile, negative behaviors
or influences are the behaviors showed by friends including negative actions and negative talks (e.g:
“my friends always make noise and do not focus in math class! They are always reprimanded by teachers. Some of them
are good but most of them are not. I hate my friend who sit beside me most because he often sings Korean song. That
makes me sleepy and I feel like asking him to move to Korea instead of sitting beside me”; “(my friends) always make
noise!! (I) cannot focus!!! I am always left behind!!! They act so childish. I just want to shut their mouth and give them a
punch. arghhhhhhhhh!! STRESS!!”). Lastly, lack of support is related to friends behaviors that create
competitive situation in the aspects of self-ability and performance (e.g: “all my friends are good in math.
When they were asked a question, they can answer very fast. I feel challenged. When I feel challenged, I lost my mood to
study”).
Table 4. Descriptive analysis on the challenges experienced by the students for the themes related to
friends
Theme
Sub
Themes
Categories
f (%)
Friends
Negative
Attitudes
1-Being surrounded by friends who dislike/hate Math
42 (28)
2-Being surrounded by friends who feel Math is a boring subject
20 (13)
3-Being surrounded by friends who feel Math is a tough subject
32 (21)
Negative
Behaviors/
Influences
1-Being surrounded by friends who do not give attention in Math class
16 (11)
2-My friends are arrogant and do not want to share knowledge
18 (12)
3-Friends like to make noise (especially. male students, disturb when teacher
teaches/do the discussion)
63 (42)
4-Being teased by those who are good in Math
10 (0.1)
5-Complaint the ways of their Math teacher’s teaching
10 (0.1)
6-Hold a negative perception towards those who are good in Math
8 (0.1)
7-Influence to not do Math exercises
7 (0.05)
Lack of
Support/
Pressure
1-Friends also sometime do not understand certain Math topics (they could not
explain Math lesson well)
20 (13)
2-Being surrounded by friends who are good in Math (competition pressure,
lose mood, doing fast in Math, becomes low self-esteem)
48 (32)
Most students had difficulty to focus in the math class because they were surrounded by
friends who liked to make noises and disturbed them during the learning process or discussion session
(f=63, 42%). Meanwhile, being surrounded by friends who are good in math (f=48, 32%) and also
who dislike math (f=42, 28%) were the second and third highest frequent challenge faced by students.
This implies that students who were motivated to learn math felt pressured when most of their friends
dislike or hate math. Meanwhile, those who had friends who are good in math felt the competitive
pressure as they do not want to be perceived as incompetent.
For the last sources of challenges (others factor), there were seven categories of challenges
stated by the students. These challenges includes the nature of math (five categories) and also the
assessment pressure (two categories) (Table 5). Nature of math includes the mathematics knowledge
and skills which referred to the information, concepts and skills that need to be acquired in order for
students to learn and solve mathematics problems (e.g: “too much math formula to be memorized and that
always makes me feel uneasy”). Besides, assessment pressure is the pressure felt by the students towards
the nature of evaluation regarding the needs to prepare themselves in anwering test or examination
questions (e.g: “the nature of math is strange. Too much nonsense topics. To the extent of my knowledge, the topics
like factor, prime factors, algebraic expression will not be used when working. When work in the shop, those will not be
used. The prime factors are all nonsense. But why it should be tested”).
Table 5. Descriptive analysis on the challenges experienced by the students for the themes related to
other factors
Theme
Sub
Themes
Categories
f (%)
Others
Nature of
Math
1-Too many formulas to be memorized
63 (42)
2-Perceived Math as difficult (too much concepts)
54 (36)
3-Too many calculations/working steps/numbers
48 (32)
4-Too much high order thinking skill/challenging questions
36 (24)
5-Too many topics to be covered
38 (25)
Assessment
Pressure
1-Examination pressure (being scolded, find difficult, cannot achieve target,
worry if cannot answer Math exam well)
66 (44)
2-School based assessment pressure (dislike; cannot cope with new system PT3)
15 (10)
The results indicated that learning mathematics was perceived as difficult by students as too
many formulas need to be memorized (f=63, 42%) as well as too many concepts involved in order to
solve mathematical problem (f=54, 36%). What is more, there were 66 (44%) of the respondents
experienced examination pressure because they think that they need to apply a lot of knowledge and
skills learned to excel in the evaluation.
DISCUSSION:
Negative attitude towards mathematics seems to be a source of challenges in learning
mathematics. This finding is aligned with the study conducted by Gomez-Chacon (2000) which found
that the emergence of negative attitudes and behaviors towards mathematics are the factor that
contribute to the failure in mathematics. When students have negative perception towards
mathematics such as perceiving mathematics as being too difficult and very confusing to learn, they
will quickly loose their interests and motivation to learn the course. As a result, they cannot perform
well in solving mathematics problems. Additionally, low self-regulation skills in dealing with the
challenges mentioned by the students in this study is parallel with the findings of many researches
which reported that many students faced difficulties in regulating their learning (Perry, Phillips &
Dowler, 2004; Winne, 2005). In addition, regulating learning is higher order thinking skills which is
very important to be acquired during the transition from primary school to secondary school and high
school life (Annevirta & Vauras, 2006). Research indicates that students form negative perceptions
towards their ability in regulating their learning during the transition process (Corpus, McClintic-
Gilbert & Hayenga, 2009).
In the aspect of teacher, the main factors indicated by students as their challenges and
obstructions in learning mathematics are teacher behaviors, practices and characteristics. For
example, students feel worried when their teachers teach too fast and have unpleasant characteristics.
As a consequence, students are afraid to ask for assistance when they are experiencing problems to
understand certain lessons. The situation becomes worse when students cannot complete the
homework given by the teachers. Marzita (2000) stated that strict and decisive teachers in the context
of mathematics education in Malaysia will eventually trigger the feeling of restless in mathematics
among students.
The findings of this study also indicated that parents, family members, friends and teachers are
the social source of challenges in learning mathematics. Kober (1991) noted that those people have a
huge potential in affecting student’s development, progress and performance. The importance of
mastering the knowledge and skills of mathematics such as the essential ability to apply Mathematics
knowledge in the real working environment (Siti Hamad & Rohani, 2010) often led parents to force
their children to master mathematics. There is no doubt that parents or teachers set certain
expectations on students’ mathematics achievement with the aim to motivate and encourage students
to give their best efforts in the learning process. However, it should be noticed that too high
expectations will lead to fear and avoidance from mathematics which indicated that the expectation
contributes to negative self-esteem of students (Arem, 2003). This is parallel to the students’ response
in the current study which mentioned that parents’ tendency to compare their mathematics ability with
others just make them feel annoyed and lowered their self-confidence.
Being surrounded by peers who have negative attitudes (disliking mathematics) and behaviors
(noisy, unwilling to do mathematics exercise) towards mathematics are the common situations
experienced by students in their daily mathematics classroom. When this happens, students will feel
discouraged to stay with mathematical tasks or activities and less motivated to compete with others.
This phenomenon should be handled well by the students so that they are able to protect themselves
from being influenced by these negative influences. This is important because peer attitude is one of
the significant determinants of students’ attitude towards mathematics (Arem, 2003). Positive
influence will lead to good consequences and vice versa.
In Malaysian education context, examination scores of Form Four and Form Five students are
still counted in the examination system to determine students' performance. In this system, the main
weightage is given to the evaluation marks while only small percentage of coursework marks are
accounted for certain subjects. Meanwhile, Form Three Assessment system (PT3) is implemented for
Form One until Form Three students. In this system, students’ grades are determined by the band
which ranges from Band 1 (weakest) to Band 6 (greatest). However, there are many schools still using
continuous tests and assessment to evaluate their students’ performance based on the marks they
scored. Moreover, students' academic achievement which is based on the examination marks or grades
are used as benchmarks for students’ success. Therefore, it is always becomes the main aim for most
of the schools to target their students to achieve high scores in examination.
Besides that, among the 74 participating countries in the Program for International School
Assessment (PISA) in the year 2009, Malaysia was one of the countries ranked at the bottom for the
mathematics performance (PISA, 2009). The achieved score was lower than the set average score.
Moreover, there was not even one student achieved advance level (PISA, 2009). The aim of PISA is
to evaluate students’ higher order thinking skills to solve problems of real life context. Therefore, the
results of this study which stated that student’s experienced difficulties in learning mathematics thus
unable to solve challenging questions and cannot see the application of mathematics in daily life is
aligned with the PISA’s achievement. Moreover, lack of skills in understanding mathematical
symbols, formulas, concepts and representations are also the challenges experienced by students in
mastering mathematics subject. This situation consequently leads students to experience anxiety (Ho
& Hyun, 2011).
CONCLUSION
Pressure seems to be the common challenge faced by the students in their daily learning process
for the mathematics subject. Specifically, the pressure may come from teacher, school or family
members who place very high expectations for students to excel in mathematics. Additionally,
competitive pressure from peers and friends also contributes to students’ anxiety in learning
mathematics. Therefore, all parties including students need to have a good mechanism to control and
minimize the pressure. Too much emphasis on the importance of getting excellent results in
examination potentially makes the students to experience worry. However, it should be done to some
extent by using the fear appeal elements. The use of fear appeal elements on student evaluation is
believed can motivate the students to learn harder especially for less hardworking students. This can
be done when teachers or parents executing it together with the explanation on the significance of
evaluation for the students’ future education and career prospect (Putwain & Roberts, (2009).
With regard to delivery, mathematics teachers should consider alternative methods of delivery
which can boost students’ motivation to continue studying mathematics. Teachers need to make sure
that their students see the value of each mathematical task or activity assigned to them. When the
students appreciate the tasks, they will be more persistence and will be more willing to stay longer in
completing the mathematics activities (Martin, 2001) because they noticed the importance of
mathematics in their life.
In addition, this is also an effective way in answering questions from students regarding the
purpose of learning particular topics in mathematics which they feel are not useful for their future.
Meanwhile, parents should put more emphasis on encouraging and motivating their children rather
than setting very high expectations. Besides, teachers need to be aware of their students’ individual
ability in learning mathematics. They must provide supportive learning environment to allow students
to learn comfortably. Finally, the students must be trained to develop a positive attitude and perception
towards mathematics. This is very important because their actions are influenced by their thinking. In
conclusion, all the challenges, obstacles and difficulties in learning mathematics should be addressed
properly so that students can endure in the daily mathematics learning progress.
Acknowledgement
This study was supported by a grant from Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FGRS), Malaysia
Ministry of Higher Education (Vot. No. R.J130000.7831.4F717). Opinions, findings and conclusions
or reccomendations expressed in the material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect
those of the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education.
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