Live your life. Create your destiny.

Live your life. Create your destiny. Does classroom management Play a role in student progress? Ina Louw louwcj@tut.ac.za

Department Mathematics and Statistics Presentationlayout • Background and motivation • Research question • Sampling • Data collection and analysis • Results • Concluding remarks

Department Mathematics and Statistics Background and motivation • Institutional project • Faculty of Science • Identification of problems • Defining “good” and “bad” • Planning the project • What is different?

Department Mathematics and Statistics Research question • How does the (“perceived”) • quality of teaching and learning; • existing support systems; and • infrastructure impact on student • pass rate in specific subjects?

Department Mathematics and Statistics Sampling • Stratified random sampling • DoE benchmark of 69% • Sampled 10 “poor” and 5 “good” • subjects • Adhered to all ethical priniples

Department Mathematics and Statistics Data collection and analysis • Student Questionnaires • Three dimensions • Focused on classroom • Lecturer • Stress factors • Suggested improvements • Analysis

Department Mathematics and Statistics Results (1) • Classroom issues: • Punctuality • Monitoring attendance • Noise • Size of group, venue • Lecturer • Timetable

Department Mathematics and Statistics Results (2) • Textbooks vs keeping up & asking • Reasons for not asking questions: • Too shy – 18% • No opportunity – 4% • Figure out myself – 8.7% • Not prepared in class – 8.7% • Poor language skills – 6.3 • Lecturer humiliates us – 2%

Department Mathematics and Statistics Results (3) • Audibility of lecturer: • 21% indicated they can not hear • 55.2% says tempo and big • words • 44.8 says ambient noise • In “poor” 59% couldn’t hear

Department Mathematics and Statistics Results (4) • Class size was a significant factor, • but not manageable by lecturer • 97.6% are in large classes • 55.6% said it impacts on their • ability to understand.

Department Mathematics and Statistics Results (5) • Sources of information (ranked): • Lecturing as #1 – 96% • Textbook as #2 – 45.32% • (Lecturers agreed)

Department Mathematics and Statistics Results (6) • Stress factors: • Classroom – 46.72% • Temperature, seating, noise • Lecturing style, tempo, hearing • -19.85% • Duration and time of periods- • 9.9%

Department Mathematics and Statistics Results (7) • Attendance and feedback: • “Role call” misunderstood • Feedback policies differ

Department Mathematics and Statistics Concluding remarks • Ambiguity is possible • No big difference between “poor” • and “good” (group size) • Lecturer evaluation go some way • No arguing of discipline, feedback • and friendly approach • What is different?

Department Mathematics and Statistics Concluding remarks (2) • Final remark: • Classroom management is a • necessity, buy not the α or Ω • Students are individuals: • One size does NOT fit all!!

Live your life. Create your destiny.