The need for effective study skills under the 21st century: a case of USA and KENYA

Type Journal Article - African Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics
Title The need for effective study skills under the 21st century: a case of USA and KENYA
Author(s)
Volume 1
Issue 1
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2014
Page numbers 25-39
URL http://www.imhotep-journal.org/index.php/imhotep/article/download/68/81
Abstract
The current world is operating in an economy that values creativity and innovation
for scientific and technological development. Education gives people appropriate skills
and knowledge they need to address their social problems. Mathematics and Science education
is at the centre of this and needs to be at the forefront to connect the present to the
future. The fact that a new generation of learners is in our classrooms requiring a paradigm
shift in pedagogy is indisputable. Teaching in the same old way and emphasis on examinations,
grades, certificates as well as lack of basic facilities have affected learning by generation
Y students. As a result, Kenya like the United States of America faces a myriad of problems
despite the fact that the youth is a reach reservoir for development. More than 50 per cent
of the world’s gold reserves, diamond, manganese, chromium, and cobalt are in Africa yet
Africans live in the poorest situations imaginable. The United States, despite being the most
powerful nation on the planet has, in general, have poor test scores in mathematics if results
of international comparative studies are anything to go by. This paper argues in addition to
poor teaching methods, strategies, and techniques, the assumption that students know how
to study mathematics once in secondary school, college, and university and the failure to
teach the same is partly to blame since year after year, students either drop out, receive poor
grades, fail to attend classes and or don’t take mathematics seriously. Millennials therefore
need to be taught study skills in mathematics to ensure quality mathematics learning for
creativity and innovativeness in the citizens. This will ensure education empowers Kenya,
Africa, and the United States for global competitiveness. In particular, this paper intends
to address the following current issues in Kenyan and Unites States schools: 1. Describe the
Millennial Student, 2. Ramifications for Kenya and the United States, 3. Kenyan and United
States curricula, 4. How to teach effective study skills, 5. What is needed of educators, and
6. What to do in the future.

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