An Assessment of Gombe State Student-Teachers’ Perceptions on Contributions of Mathematics to their Intellectual Development

Abstract

Students at various levels argue on whether Mathematics as a subject has applications in real life or not. Although, student-teachers are required to study General Mathematics while on training so as to enable them at least teach Mathematics at primary/junior secondary school; some of them have the view that the course contributes nothing to their intellectual development. Hence, this study aimed at finding out the Gombe state NCE students’ perceptions on Contributions of General Mathematics to their Intellectual Development. The outcome of this research is of significance to teacher education policy makers, as it reveals the need for re-think to making Mathematics courses not only geared toward equipping student-teachers with skills needed to teach in lower and upper basic, but also to generally develop their intellectual development. Two research questions guided this study. Five colleges of education were selected as sample of the study and the collected data were analyzed using frequency counts and mean scores. The results revealed that, student-teachers view Mathematics subjects’ contributions to their intellectual development as insignificant, hence to them, General Mathematics contributes a little if not none to their intellectual development. This study therefore, recommends inclusion of some topics or branches of Mathematics that have direct applications to intellectual development like Logic, Mathematical Modelling and Real Analysis in the General Mathematics’ contents.