Assessing Students Perception of Difficult Topics in Mathematics at Senior Secondary Schools in Kano, Nigeria

This study was conducted to assess the students’ perception of difficult topics in mathematics in some selected senior secondary schools (SS) in Kano state Nigeria. Two hundred (200) SS final year (III) Students were randomly selected from ten (10) selected senior secondary schools within Bichi zone of Kano state Nigeria. A twenty items questionnaire was administered to respondents. Mean, standard deviation and Independent sample t-test statistics were used to analyse the data. Findings revealed that students perceived 13 topics (65%) difficult to comprehend. The study also showed that students’ gender has a significant influence on their perception of difficult topics in mathematics [t (198) =2.34, P =0.020, α = .05] and nature of students’ schools has no significant influence on their perception of difficulty in mathematics [t (198) = -.444, p = 0.657, α = .05]. It was recommended that students should be encourage and motivated to learn mathematics, curriculum developers to develop instructions that would improve students’ knowledge by laying more emphasis on the perceived difficulty areas in mathematics and further studies be conducted to find out the factors responsible for the perceived difficulty and also if there is a relationship between perception and students’ achievement