INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOPEDAGOGIC FACTORS ON STUDENTS’ MATHEMATICS ACHIEVEMENT IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN THE SOUTH WEST REGION OF CAMEROON

The study sets out to investigate the influence of psychopedagogic factors on students’ Mathematics achievement in Secondary schools in the South West Region of Cameron. The specific objectives were to find out the influence of teacher’s knowledge, and motivation on students’ mathematics achievement in secondary schools. The study was a descriptive cross-sectional survey which utilized a sample of 64 mathematics teachers and 384 form 5 students drawn randomly from 53 purposively selected Government, Denominational and Lay Private Secondary Schools in Fako, Meme, Ndian and Kupe-Muanenguba Divisions. The study utilized two, 4-point Likert scale instruments (Mathematics Achievement Teacher’s Opinion Questionnaire- MATOQ and Mathematics Achievement Student’s Opinion Sheet- MASOS). The validity of the instruments was done by administering 10 copies of MATOQ to 10 mathematics teachers and 15 copies of MASOS to15 form 5 students who formed part of the population but were not included in the sample. The reliability of both instruments stood at 0.86 for MATOQ and 0.77 for MASOS calculated using Chronbach α test and read at α<0.05 level of significance. For MATOQ data were analyzed inferentially using one sample t - test analysis while for MASOS descriptive statistics made use of Mean response scores (MRS) and standard deviations (S). Both tools utilized the SPSS for data analysis. When the objectives were tested, teacher’s knowledge was found to have a higher influence on students’ Mathematics achievement when compared to student’s motivation. The findings were that Psychopedagogic factors have a high influence on students’ Mathematics achievement in secondary schools. When the hypotheses were tested, it was found that, there is a more significant influence of motivation on students’ Mathematics Achievement when compared to teacher’s knowledge. The general findings were that, there is a significant influence of psychopedagogic factors on students’ Mathematics achievement in Secondary Schools in the South West Region. The study recommended that: mathematics teachers should regularly update their knowledge, at least once yearly, in order to keep pace with the exigencies in content and pedagogy; Government should organize more of these seminars regularly to equip teachers with requisite knowledge and skills. Teachers should intensify the use of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation techniques in Mathematics classrooms so as to make the learning of the subject attractive to learners. Government should provide more of these facilities in schools, and so on.