Misconceptions of Students in Learning Mathematics at Primary Level

The study was designed to identify the misconceptions of the students in learning mathematics at primary level. For this, curriculum of mathematics from class I to IV was used to develop a test inclusive of all the conceptual areas of mathematics from class I to Class IV. The curriculum of class V was left out because the sample students were planned to take into the study who were studying in class V. Twelve sample schools from Faisalabad district were selected randomly equal in number from all the three tehsils of Faisalabad. Test was conducted personally by the researchers. There were eight conceptual areas determined and included in the test viz. Numbers, Operations on Numbers, Fractions, Operations on Fractions, Decimals, Measurement, Information Handling and Geometry. The data collected from the all the students of class V of the selected sample schools, and 248 students took part in the exercise. Multi items were developed in each of the areas with different difficulties in order to have an idea of which of the selected eight areas was posing threat of misconceptions amongst the sample students. The data were analyzed using SPSS. Item-wise and gender-wise analyses was conducted to identify misconceptions and errors students committed and also to find out whether there was uniformity gender-wise or otherwise. The analyses disclosed that almost are the areas were having abandon of the errors and misconceptions and hence the achievement remained very low (mean score remained within 6.2 to 16.1 out of 51).