Mathematics textbooks and self-regulated learning: responses from students in three Kenyan secondary schools

ABSTRACT

The current moves by many African countries including Kenya to reform their mathematics education to adopt learner-centred pedagogies presents a need to fill the knowledge gap on learner-textbook relationships there. The mathematics textbook remains a key resource for teaching and learning and is increasingly being expected to play a pedagogical role in addition to making the national curriculums manifest to both teachers and students. In Kenya, the textbooks published by the state-owned company are regarded as core and occupy a central role in mathematics teaching. We present findings on the perceptions of students at three Kenyan public secondary schools on what they value in textbooks and what they find lacking in their core text in their efforts towards engagement with mathematics through self-regulated learning. Implications for practice are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Mathematics textbooks
• self-regulated learning
• Kenya

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK for their support for the doctoral study on which this article is based, to Dr Gill Adams for comments on an earlier version of this paper and to our helpful reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The article is based on the first author’s doctoral thesis (Otieno, 2018). All of the data extracts presented are copied verbatim from the thesis and some sections of the text also first appeared there.

2 The use of the word “revision” is not the same throughout Anglophone countries. Here, as in the UK, the term means examination preparation.