ABSTRACT

Math is an important subject for other fields of sciences and useful for solving real-world problems. But there seems to be a decline in the attention towards this subject, also including Cambodian context. It is necessary explore the causes behind this issue and to promote the learning of this subject. In this paper, the researcher uses a sample from existing data obtained from grade 10 and 11 Cambodian students of public secondary schools in 2019 to analyze students’ perceptions of how they know the importance of Math and perceptions of the obstacles/difficulties in learning the subject using principle component analysis. Findings reveal three components/variables, two of which are obstacle-related, and another is of sources of knowledge of math importance. The analysis of data also includes testing the difference in perceptions of rural-school students and urban-school students over the obstacles/difficulties of learning math and the sources of knowledge of math importance, using Mann-Whitney U test. The results show no different perceptions over the sources of knowledge of math importance but significant difference in perceptions over the obstacles of learning math.

Keywords: Perception, importance of math, learning math, Mann-Whitney U test, principal component analysis, PCA.