A Journey into Creative Writing: RESEARCH REPORT

RESEARCH REPORT

Darvesh Karim

Assistant Instructor

Professional Development Center, North

University Road, Konodass, Gilgit.

Ph. No: (+92) 05811-454132-4 Ext: 3017

Fax No: (+92) 05811-454135

Cell No: (+92) 03465419307

Email (Official): darveshkarim@pdcn.edu.pk

Email (Private): dk_hunzai@yahoo.com, darvesh.karim@gmail.com

Online Blogs: www.dkhunza.blogspot.com; www.scribd.com/dk_hunzai

Background

Curriculum Wing of Education Department decided to introduce a new mathematics curriculum for Pakistani schools. Therefore, the department selected a team of Curriculum Development Experts (CDE) and they prepared a new curriculum. The team made four claims about the new curriculum; it is beneficial in enhancing children’s learning outcomes, gender fair, Socio-Economic Status (SES) is also related to children’s learning outcome and class size matters in students learning.

A team of researchers has collected data from schools that have adopted the new mathematics curriculum for 5^th level. The data were collected from 100 students of Class 5 at two points in time: before the implementing the new mathematics curriculum and after the implementation in schools.

This paper presents analysis of data to see the validity of the claims of curriculum developers. Furthermore, generalizibilty of research findings from sample to population is also discussed followed by some recommendations based on findings to education department.

Data Analysis

I analyzed the four claims one by one using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).

Claim 1

The CDE team’s first claimed that the new introduced curriculum is beneficial in enhancing children’s learning outcomes regardless of school systems – government, private. Measure of central tendencies and t-test will confirm the claim of experts.

Table 1.1: comparison of pre and post test across school systems (See appendices A & B)

Test	mean	SD	Std. Error Mean
Pre Test
Government	59.0	23.08	3.26
Private	61.4	22.39	3.17
Post Test
Government	69.6	20.35	2.88
Private	64.8	21.31	3.01

The overall results from Table1.1 depicts that children from the government system of schools scored lower (mean = 59.0; SD = 23.08) than the children from private system of schools (mean = 61.4; SD = 22.39) in pre-test. On contrary, on average score in post test, government schools (mean=69.6; SD= 20.25) achieved higher scores than the private schools (mean = 64.8; SD = 21.31). On the whole, the average scores of government systems of schools (69.6 - 59.0 = 10.6) improved than private system of schools (64.8 -61.4 = 3.4) from pre to post test.

Test for normality shows that the distribution is normal (P > .05) and scores of pre and post test of both systems of schools qualify for parametric tests (see appendix C).

Table1.2: t-TEST for school systems

Table1.2 shows that there is significant difference in terms of progress from pre-test to post-test (p < .01). It means that the learning outcomes of students of both the systems of schools have significantly progressed due to intervention. Furthermore, there is significant progress in terms of learning out comes of government system of schools [t (49) = -13.05; P < .01] as compared to the private systems of schools [t (49) = -7.71; P < .01]. Here question arises that the curriculum designers have claimed that the new curriculum is equally beneficiary for both the government and private systems but here government system of schools have significantly progressed as compared to private system of education. I can give a judgment that the claim of Curriculum Development Experts is invalid and curriculum is not equally beneficial for both the systems of schools. But literature about Pakistani schooling system is portraying that private schools due to better facilities are better performers than the government schools as government systems have many problems from teaching staff such as absenteesm and irregularity in duties (Alderman, Orazem & Paterno, 2001; Andrabi, Das & Khawaja, 2006). In short, this study is giving some contradicting results from literature. The findings might be affected due to small sample and if the sample was larger, the findings might be alike what literature is suggesting from Pakistani education system.

Claim 2

The second claim of the Curriculum Development Experts team is that the new curriculum is gender fair. In other words, both girls and boys would perform equally well in mathematics after implementation of this curriculum.

Table1.3: comparison of pre and post test across gender

Test	mean	SD	Std. Error Mean
Pre Test
male	61.36	21.94	3.01
female	58.91	23.61	3.44
Post Test
male	67.72	20.44	2.81
female	66.66	21.56	3.14

The overall results from Table1.3 depicts that females scored lower (mean = 58.91; SD = 23.61) than males (mean = 61.36; SD = 21.94) in pre-test. The situation remained almost same as the average score in post test, females scored low (mean=66.66; SD=21.56) than their male counter part (mean = 67.72; SD = 20.44). However, the difference in terms of achievement is not significant between genders. On the whole, the difference of average scores of males (-6.36) and females (-7.74) shows that both male and female progressed from pre to post test. Test for normality (P > .05) for both males and females shows that the distribution is normal and t-test is applicable (see appendix).

Table1.4: t-TEST for male and female

Further analysis shows that there is significant difference in terms of learning outcomes of both male and female after intervention (P < .01 for gender) which means that both male and female progressed in terms of learning outcome after implementation of new curriculum. However, females [t (46) = -9.19; P < .01] scored slightly higher than their male counter parts [t (52) = -7.85; P < .01] but the difference is not significant across gender. The difference among scores of male and females in pre and post test shows that achievement remained same but both male and female progressed almost with the same difference. In short, mostly males achieve slightly more than females in mathematics (Mittelberg & Levari, 1999) but sometimes females are achiever (Hyde, Fennema & Lamon, 1990).

In concluding the claim of curriculum developers revealed valid that the new

curriculum is gender fair; both boys and girls would perform equally well in mathematics after implementation of this curriculum.

Claim 3

The third claim of the Curriculum Development Experts is that Socio-Economic Status (SES) which consists of three proxy variables – income, education and profession of the parents – is also related to children’s learning outcome.

Table1.5: Correlation between learning outcomes and socio economic status of parents (See Appendix)

Proxy variables	Education level of parents of sampled children	Profession of parents of sampled children	Income of parents of sampled children
Class 5 children score of mathematics post-test (total marks=100)	r=.874** P=.0001 100	r=.598** P=.0001 100	r=.272** P=.0001 100

The table1.5 shows that there is a significant correlation between the socio-economic status of parents (parents’ educational level, profession and income) and children’s learning outcomes in mathematics. However, the educational level of parents has the strongest positive correlation with the children’s learning outcomes (r = 0.87; P < .01). Along with parent education, profession of parents (r = 0.60; P < .01) and the parents’ income (r = 0.27; P < .01) has also strong positive relationship with the children’s learning outcomes. In other words, students learning outcomes have strong positive correlation with the education, profession and income of parents of children. But parents’ education has the higher effect on the learning outcomes of students as compared to profession and income of parents. This might be because of the parents support to the children that results significant achievement in mathematics (Ministry of Education, 2005). It can be said that the correlation between the socio-economic status of parents and children’s outcomes is significantly correlated.

Hence, the CDE team’s claim that socio-economic status (consisting of three variables: parents’ educational level, profession and income) is related to children’s learning outcomes is true.

Claim 4

The fourth and final claim of CDE team is that “Class size is also related to children’s learning outcomes”. The correlation between students’ scores on post-test and number of children in class will confirm the validity of the claim.

Table1.6: correlation between students learning outcomes and class size (see appendix)

	Class 5 children score on math post-test (Total marks=100)	Number of children enrolled in sampled classes
Class 5 children score on Pearson correlation (r) maths post-test Sig. (2-talied) (Total marks=100) N	r=1 100	r = - .009 P = .927 100
Number of children Pearson correlation (r) enrolled in sampled Sig. (2-talied) classes N	r=-.009 P=.927 100	r=1 100

Table 5 depicts that correlation is negative and approximately approaches to zero (r = .009). Therefore, correlation in this case is not statistically significant. In other words, there is no significant correlation (r = -.009; p > .05) between students learning outcomes and size of the class. Hence, the number of children in classroom has no significant effect on students learning outcomes in case of new curriculum. Therefore, on the basis of figures of correlation, passes the judgment that the claim of experts that classroom size affects the learning outcomes of student is not valid. However, results might be affected due to inclusion of more students from those classrooms where size is lesser. For example, only five students are selected from the classes where number of student is 70 while twenty students are selected from those classes where number of students is only thirty. Moreover, literature is suggesting that the smaller number of students in the classroom, learning outcomes is higher. In this regard Blatchford, Goldstein & Martin (2002) asserts that small sized classroom have an impressive effect on children learning outcomes. They further elaborate that learning outcome in mathematics is significant when class size is below twenty five. In curriculum implementation case, despite differences in the classroom size, students learning outcome did not change.

Recommendations

Based on above analysis and findings, I am presenting the following recommendations for education department.

1. Some studies with the large sample should be conducted to find out that why this curriculum is more beneficial for government system of schools. On the results of the studies, curriculum should be made workable for both systems equally.

2. Curriculum should be designed in such a way that students of low and high socio-economic status should be able to get benefit from it as majority of population in country

have low socio-economic status.

3. Ministry of education can provide free books and studying centers for low socio economic status students.

4. A study should be conducted with larger sample so as to see the actual impact of classroom size on children learning outcomes.

Generalization

Findings are not generalizable to whole 5^th class students in Pakistani because population is not mentioned out of which sample of one hundred children are taken. If the population was exactly given then findings could be generalize to that population. If population in this study is the total number of class 5^th children then findings are not generalizable to whole population in Pakistan because of small sample size.

REFERENCES

Alderman, H., Orazem, P. F. & Paterno, E. M. (2001). School quality, cost and public\private school choices on low income household in Pakistan. The Journal of Resources, 36(2), 304-326.

Andrabi, T., Das, J. & Khawaja, A. I. (2006). Students today, teachers tomorrow? The rise of affordable private schools. Retrieved on July 4, 2007 from tandrabi@pomona.edu

Blatchford, P., Goldstein, H., & Martin, C. (2002). A study of class size effects in English school reception year classes. British Educational Research Journal, 28(2), 169-185.

Hyde, J. S., Fennema, E. & Lamon, S. J. (1990). Gender differences in mathematics performances: A meat analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 107(2), 139-155.

Mittelberg, D. & Levari, L. (1999). Confidence in mathematics and its consequences: gender differences among Israeli and Arab youth. Gender and Education, 11(1), 75-92.

Ministry of Education, (2005). National assessment report. Islamabad: Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan. Retrieved on July 5, 2007 from http://www.moe.gov.pk/publications.htm

APPENDIX-A

Pre and post test scores of government and private systems of school