The Relationship Between Pre-Service Teachers’ Performance in Mathematics and Science in their End-of-Semester Examinations

Mathematics and Science Education

Mathematics plays a huge part in a child’s studies in science and it is seen as a tool of the sciences. This study employs a descriptive survey designed to find out the relationship between the achievement in Mathematics and Science achievement in the pre-service mathematics and science student teachers in three Colleges of Education in the Central Region of Ghana. Views were sampled through a 20-item Likert-type questionnaire from 240 Level 200 students and analysed using SPSS. Also, data from documents on the End of Semester Examinations results of students from 2018 and 2019 were analysed for the study. Data was subjected to frequency counts involving simple percentages and content analysis techniques using themes and comments from questionnaires. This was to address the research questions and corresponding hypotheses that were formulated to guide the study. Using Pearson product moment correlation and t-test statistics, it was found that there existed a significant relationship between Mathematics and Integrated Science at 0.05 level of significance. Also, the students believe that their performance in Mathematics has a bearing in that of Integrated Science. The study therefore concludes that there exists a relationship between the performance in Mathematics and that of science and that the performance in Mathematics can be used to predict the performance in science. The study recommends that the necessity of Mathematics for Science students in Colleges of Education should be sustained and curriculum planners are to further incorporate content in both subjects involved in this study.

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