Mathematics Teachers’ Assessment of the Role of Millennium Development Goals in the Implementation of the 9-Year Basic Education Mathematics Curriculum

Abstract

The Basic Education Mathematics Curriculum is focused on giving children in Primary and Junior secondary schools in Nigeria the opportunity to acquire mathematical literacy to function in an information age, cultivate understanding of the skills necessary for the changing technical world. The role of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the realization of the focus of the Basic Education Mathematics curriculum is paramount. This study therefore investigated the Mathematics teachers’ assessment of the role of the Millennium Development Goals in the implementation of the 9-year Basic Education Mathematics Curriculum in Nigeria. The study involved four hundred and thirty (430) primary and junior secondary school mathematics teachers in two local government areas of the southern senatorial district of Ondo State. One research instrument tagged “Mathematics Teachers’ Assessment of MDGs Questionnaire” on a four point likert scale was used for data collection. Appropriate statistics that is frequency counts, mean and Standard deviation were used to analyze data. The findings of the result revealed that, mathematics teachers at the Basic Education level had a good perception of the roles of the MDGs especially on the area of capacity building of teachers for effective and efficient delivery. Mathematics teachers also had a positive assessment or impression of the MDGs provision of infrastructural facilities including instructional materials to schools. It is therefore recommended that, the training of teachers by MDGs should cut across all teacher and all subjects at the Basic Education level to be able to fully actualize the goals and objectives of the curriculum.

Keywords: Mathematics Curriculum, Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Teachers’ Perception and Assessment, Implementation