ASSESSING SENIOR SECONDARY STUDENTS' KNOWLEDGE OF BASIC MATHEMATICAL SKILLS AND ALGEBRA

This study assessed the extent of the senior secondary students’ knowledge of basic mathematical skills and algebrain Obio/Akpor Local Government Area (LGA) of Rivers State, Nigeria. Four research questions and four hypotheses guided the study. A minimum sample of 400 students obtained from a population of 18,087 using Taro Yamane formula was selected by simple random sampling. Basic Mathematical Skills Test (BMST) and Algebra Performance Test (APT) were used for data collection. The instruments were validated by experts in Mathematics Education while their reliabilities were established using test-retest method. The reliability coefficients of 0.74 and 0.78 were obtained for BMST and APT respectively by correlating the test and re-test scores of BMST and APT using the Pearson product moment correlation. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while sample t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 significant level. Major result of the study showed that students’ knowledge of basic mathematical skills and algebra is significantly high. The result also revealed that the differences in the male and the female students’ knowledge of basic mathematical skills and algebra are not significant respectively. It was recommended among others that the current instructional process and practice in Mathematics at the basic and senior secondary education levels should be sustained and instead improved upon by the Mathematics teachers