PREFERENCE LEARNING STYLE IN MATHEMATICS: STUDENTS PERCEPTION

Abstract

Teaching is an ability of complex recognition which is not inborn, but it is a process which can be learned and improved during time. This is the reason why we always try to improve and develop our ability in offering the best qualitative teaching methods to students in our universities. The aim of this research is to analyze some different aspects of student’s preferences in learning mathematics, especially to analyze the preferences concerning the teaching style used by the teacher in the classroom. In this paper we show the results obtained from a survey realized during the fall semester of 2014 - 2015 with students of two different faculties of the SEE-University, students from the Faculty of Contemporary Sciences and Technologies and Faculty of Business Economics. The results obtained by this survey show that the method favored by the students is the non-traditional one with preference of 60.5%. In order to analyze student’s preferences over different teaching methods versus some other factors, we have used cross tabulation. The results obtained in this paper show that the preferences of the female students, students with the GPA now between 7 and 8, students with MATH score in last semester with 6 (Satisfactory)  tend in preference towards non-traditional methods.  Taking into consideration the nature of the subject of mathematics, the obtained results suggest that the teacher should increase his engagement in the subject using different practices and methods in the classroom in order to enhance the interest of the students for the subject.