Teachers’ Use of Instructional Materials in the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics in private Secondary Schools of Gasabo District, Rwanda

The use of instructional materials makes the teaching and learning of mathematics simpler, more engaging, more enjoyable, and more closely connected to real-world applications. This study explored the teachers’ use of instructional materials in the teaching and learning of mathematics in private secondary schools in the Gasabo district, Rwanda. A case study research design under the qualitative method was employed. The convenience sampling technique was used to select five private secondary schools while the purposive sampling technique was adopted to select two teachers from the five private secondary schools in the Gasabo district, Rwanda. Self-administered questionnaires and classroom observations of ten mathematics teachers from the five schools were used for data collection. The collected data was read and reread, edited, and coded for easy interpretation and understanding in assessing its qualitative accuracy. The findings indicated that most instructional materials are available. However, the most ones used are textbooks and writing materials. The analysis of the classroom observations in relation to the sociocultural theory and Gagnes’ theory of instructional design revealed that most mathematics teachers used instructional materials as a way of presenting new content more memorable and meaningful to the learners. However, some teachers did not allow students to actively interact with the materials, and thus, students were not given the opportunity to enhance their active learning and participate in constructing their knowledge of the mathematics content. Based on the conclusion of this study, it is recommended that teachers should be creative enough to improvise simple instructional materials to spice up their teaching and not to prove unconcerned on the premise of unavailable or inadequate instructional materials. In-service training programs on instructional material utilization should be organized by school leaders to enable teachers to gain more knowledge on the use of instructional materials in the teaching and learning process.