Teaching of Earth Geometry at Secondary School in Zambia

Abstract

The study explores the challenges associated with teaching Earth Geometry in secondary schools.  Selected secondary schools of Mufulira District in Zambia were the focus of the study and a total of 21 Teachers and 97 pupils formed the sample population to whom questionnaires were administered. In addition, a 5-point Likert scale formed part of the research instrument used to investigate the phenomenon. The collected data was analysed using SPSS which allowed for simple frequency counts, percentages, means and analysis of variance. To further understand the phenomenon under study, data collected from the pupils by way of interviews and document reviews was analyzed using the QDA miner 4.0 version software. It was established that pupils faced the following challenges: computation of the shortest distance between points on the same latitude, distinguishing between knots and kilometres per hour, and distinguishing great circles and small circles.

Keywords: learners, teachers, earth geometry, latitudes, knots and kilometer, circles