Gender Sensitive Pedagogy: The Solution to Girls Negative Attitude towards Mathematics in the South West Region of Cameroon

Mathematics is an important subject in the secondary school curriculum, because its skills are needed for understanding and applying science and technology for development, but it has been noticed in most of the secondary schools in the South West Region of Cameroon that many female students unlike their male counterparts, have negative attitudes towards mathematics, visible in their lack of interest and low participation in its lessons. This attitude affects their ability to engage with Math-related content, leads to poor performance and consequently fewer females pursuing degrees in fields that require a strong mathematics background. This paper seeks to explore the factors that negatively affect female student’s attitude towards mathematics and also to show how teachers can use a gender sensitive pedagogy to improve on the attitude, participation and performance of girls in mathematics. Research questions were constructed; feminist theories and other theories of teaching and learning were employed to guide the study. The study was Triangulatory. The study utilized 450 form four students and 72 of their parents, 44mathematics teachers from 158 public secondary schools in the South West Region of Cameroon. Statistical Package for social science (SPSS) version 12 was used to analyze data collected by research instruments. The results confirmed that some factors that are related to parents and girls perceptions about mathematics and the mathematics teacher's attitude and pedagogical approach are crucial factors that affect the participation and performance of girls in mathematics. To improve on the participation and performance of girls, the Researcher recommends that the pedagogy for secondary school mathematics should be gender sensitive.