Osagyefuo Amoatia Ofori Panin and other personalities at the ceremony
HAVE YOU ever panicked because you are in an exam room and a mathematics question paper has been placed before you?
You are certainly not the only one to have experienced this. Indeed, scores of learners across Ghana and the globe have felt just like you, and there are many more likely to face this ‘monster’ called ‘maths phobia’ that has terrorised you and many others in the past.
But thanks to the Centre for Excellence in Mathematics (CEMATHS), the phobia is being demystified for many young learners in Ghana and Nigeria.
CEMATHS was formed to address this problem using teaching strategies developed by the Math Corps programme at Wayne State University.
CEMATHS organised an international conference on mathematics at the La Palm Royal Beach, University of Ghana (UG) from January 10 to January 13, 2018 to find a solution to challenges being faced by students in understanding mathematics as a subject.
The conference was attended by over 200 delegates from all regions of Ghana, 50 delegates from Nigeria and 11 delegates from the US.
Some 120 students of the Accra College of Education, who are studying to become teachers of mathematics, attended the conference. They were encouraged and taught how to be good ‘evangelists’ of mathematics.
Speaking at the launch of the report on the conference, the Okyenhene of Akyem-Abuakwa State and the life patron of CEMATHS, Osagyefuo Amoatia Ofori Panin, observed the need for a strong mathematics curriculum to help alleviate the ‘maths phobia’ problem.
Prof Joseph Ofori-Dankwa, the H.R. Wickes Endowed Chair of International Business Studies, Saginaw Valley State University, Michigan, USA had bemoaned the “incidence of bad mathematics performance in the nation (Ghana) and some sister nations like Nigeria which needs an urgent call to look at the mathematics problem “math phobia.”
Prof Leonard Boehm, an Associate Director of the Math Corp and also a co-founder of Math Corps programme, gave an overview and brief history of the Math Corp of Wayne State University and how the Math Corps programme helped alleviate the ‘math phobia’ problem for participating students in the Detroit community.
BY Melvin Tarlue