Distribution of Teachers and Students Discourse in the Teaching of Mathematics in Secondary Schools

Globally, mathematics in school curriculum is essential to communities and the society at large. This is applicable in the African context Kenya in particular. The study also aimed at revealing any difference in classroom discourse patterns in the teaching and learning of mathematics in the three types of schools, boys, girls and mixed schools. The reason could probably be that the classroom discourses used during mathematics lessons discourage students interaction in the teaching and learning processes. The primary concern of this study was therefore to establish whether or not the problem of poor performance lies in the discourse patterns used during mathematics lessons in secondary schools. The study was a cross-sectional descriptive survey focusing on form 3 students and their mathematics teachers. Disproportionate Stratified sampling technique was used to select 9 secondary schools from 67 public schools of Nakuru District. Form 3 students were selected purposively. Simple random sampling used to select a form 3 stream from each of the sampled school where there is more than one stream, otherwise the stream was purposively selected. Quantitative analysis made use of descriptive statistics such as means percentages, and frequencies and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) values. The data analyzed revealed that mathematics teachers use different discourse patterns in their classes. The teachers discourse dominated the mathematics classrooms as opposed to students discourses which were mainly determined by the teacher and were mostly in form of responding to teachers initiated questions. The teachers controlled the classrooms and thus denied the students with the opportunities to express their thinking process verbally.