Assessment For Learning And Mathematics Achievement In Public Secondary Schools In Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

Paradigm shift in educational evaluation as well as assessment in educational system is to ensure that assessment achieves its basic purpose and objective, which is to improve students’ learning. This leads to real life competencies, better discourse in discipline area, more collaborative learning, self-evaluation principles, and better assessment for learning pedagogic practices. The study’s purpose was to determine if assessment for learning makes a difference in learner’s mathematics performance. The study’s objectives were: a) to determine if feedback provision to learners has an effect on their achievement in mathematics; b) to assess if active involvement of students improves their performance in mathematics; c) to establish the challenges encountered by instructors when implementing AFL in mathematics; d) to determine if self-assessment has an influence on the student’s math attainment. The outcomes of the study provide information to teachers concerning their teaching success which is essential for modifying their teaching method to suite the learners, helps administrations in identifying difficulties encountered by educators when implementing the assessment for learning and therefore hence provide adequate facilities and approaches in enhancing their teaching process which may finally improve overall school performance, the findings assists curriculum developers in evaluating the curriculum and put emphasis on AFL practices, enable the teachers to know the learners views and incorporate them in their teaching by developing appropriate approaches to meet the learner’s needs and the outcomes sustain and strengthen learners’ effort and motivation in order to build up the self-esteem of low achieving learners. The research was directed by constructivist theory which is a philosophical theory about how it is the learners come to know things. The study employed descriptive design in form of questionnaire and quasi-experimental, utilizing pretest posttest equivalent group. Pretest and posttest were from surds and commercial arithmetic II topics respectively. The target population involved the public high schools within Nairobi County while the research population was math teachers and learners of form three. Sampling technique of purposive was utilized to obtain 5 public secondary schools with average performance. Content and face validities were used to validate the instruments and test-retest approach was utilized for reliability estimation. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version eleven.5) was utilized for data analysis by comparing the mean scores of the control and experimental groups. The outcomes were organized into charts and graphs. According to outcomes where the experimental group showed an improvement of +7.675 as mean score, it was concluded that AFL contributes significantly to learner’s achievement in mathematics.