Abstract

The Initial Primary Teacher Education (IPTE) programme was reformed to adopt the outcomes based education which encourages the use of learner-centred approaches as a way of addressing the lowering education quality in Malawi. For this reason, this study was undertaken to determine the extent of the use of these approaches in the teaching of mathematics at one public TTC in Malawi. The study used mixed method approach which combines quantitative and qualitative data collection methods. The quantitative methods involved the use of a questionnaire to gather data from 160 students while the qualitative methods involved the use of interviews and lesson observations to obtain data from 7 mathematics teacher educators. The study established that learner-centred approaches were used to a large extent in the teaching of mathematics despite some difficulties that students as well as teacher educators experienced during the process of teaching and learning. Both students and teacher educators contended that these approaches offer more opportunities for learning mathematics as opposed to the traditional approaches such as lecturing which were also used in teaching some mathematics lessons. This study recommends a review of IPTE in which the instructions for most activities promote the use of few teaching methods such as group work and discussion as revealed by the study findings.

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School	: School of Education
Issued Date	: 2016

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