Table 1. Level of General Intelligence of Undergraduate Mathematics Students
Academic achievement is very important in any educational setting, as it indicates the level of students' competence in respect of the academic content. This is obviously defined in terms of performance which represents the most understandable and regularly accepted pointer of performance in educational contexts (Ladipo & Gbotosho, 2015). Intelligence influences our ability on all level of intellectual tasks. Generally, people who are good at mathematics associate intelligence with it. Not everybody, but majority think on these lines. For them, being good at mathematics is an important criteria for being general intelligent. This study investigated the extent to which general intelligence determine the performance in mathematics among undergraduate students. The investigator used random sampling technique for selecting the sample from the population. The sample consists of 310 students studying undergraduate mathematics in Tirunelveli District, Tamil Nadu, India. Standardized tool namely Test of General Intelligence (TGI) for College Students by Misra and Pal was used and its reliability value was 0.81. The data collected were subjected to statistical techniques like t - test and F-test. Further analysis showed that majority of the undergraduate mathematics students had moderate level of general intelligence. Findings on relationships between general intelligence and performance of undergraduate mathematics students are positively correlated. The study recommended that the performance of study groups should be formed in the college to help in cooperative learning of outperformed students than male students. Since these groups will also help the weaker students to enhance the performance in their subjects.
Intelligence is acknowledged by all teachers that one of the most important single variable which affects schooling is the quality of behavior called intelligence. In psychology literature, intelligence has been treated as a construct; no one knows what intelligence is. Several definitions have been advanced by psychologists but no two psychologists agree on a single definition of the term (Mangal, 2011). Stern (2009) stated that intelligence is a general capacity of an individual consciously to adjust his/her thinking to new requirement. It is the general mental adaptability to new problems and conditions of life. Kant says mathematics is the indispensable instrument of all physical researches. Gauss says mathematics is the queen of sciences and arithmetic is the queen of all mathematics. According to Bacon, mathematics is the gateway and key to all sciences which means mathematics is the science of number and space. Aristotle in his view about mathematics is the study of quantity (Mangal, 2016; Zubair, 2012).
The human mind does not record sense experience directly, but rather it registers and selectively documents a highly processed and meaning-centered version of experience. Conventional beliefs about intelligence have too long been oppressors of the human spirit and antagonists of self-esteem and human potential. It is now time to see intelligence as a liberator as a marvelously rich entity that help explain the individuality of our species. It is to see possibilities for human expression as rolling forward indefinitely, proceeding in pleasing directions possibilities whose hazy outlines we can barely perceive (Martinez, 2000). May be each of us possess a certain amount of goal in general.
Research in cognitive development has led to understanding of basic processes involved in academic skills, like reading and mathematics problem-solving. Mathematics has great cultural values; it has helped in transmitting and enriching our culture. It has helped in the development of various subjects and occupations. It is mainly responsible for the progress of our civilization and it has been rightly said, “mathematics is the mirror of civilization”. It has helped man in bringing him to the advanced stage of development. Having the doubt whether the performance of the Undergraduate students of mathematics is attributed by their intelligence, the investigator took this study.
In the present study, the following objectives are framed to measure the assessing general intelligence in influencing performance of mathematics among undergraduate mathematics students.
The background variables are gender, age, nature of the college, nature of the management, locality of the college, and types of the family.
The following hypotheses are formulated based on the objectives.
The method adopted in the present study is survey method which comes under descriptive research.
The sample of the study consists of the students studying undergraduate mathematics. The investigator selected 310 students from 10 Colleges who are studying in undergraduate mathematics in Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu, India, and followed stratified random sampling technique. The sample consists of male and female undergraduate mathematics students.
The present study was designed to assess the general intelligence and per formance in the subject mathematics among undergraduate students. General Intelligence Scale was developed and standardized by Misra and Pal which contains 60 items. Its reliability value was 0.81 (Misra & Pal, 1971).
The collected data were analyzed by using statistical techniques, like mean, standard deviation, t-test, F test, and Correlation.
From Table 1 it is inferred that more than 69% of undergraduate mathematics students have moderate level of general intelligence.
Table 1. Level of General Intelligence of Undergraduate Mathematics Students
In Table 2, since p value is greater than 0.05, the null hypothesis is accepted at 5% level of significance. It shows that there is no significant difference in general intelligence of undergraduate students with regard to gender, locality of the college, and type of family.
Table 2. Significance of Difference in General Intelligence of Undergraduate Mathematics Students with regard to Selected Variables
In this table, since p value is less than 0.05, the null hypothesis is rejected at 5% level of significance. It shows that there is a significant difference in general intelligence of undergraduate mathematics students with regard to nature of the college.
Further, the mean scores show that students of Women’s college has more general intelligence than the students from co-education college.
In Table 3, since p value is less than 0.05, the null hypothesis is rejected at 5% level of significance. It shows that there is a significant difference in general intelligence of undergraduate mathematics students with regard to age and nature of management.
Table 3. 'F' Values in General Intelligence of Undergraduate Mathematics Students with regard to Age and Nature of Management
It shows that the undergraduate mathematics students aged below 19 have more general intelligence than those aged 19 and above. Further, it shows that the undergraduate mathematics students of government college have more general intelligence than the students of aided and self-finance college.
From Table 4 it is inferred that more than 71% of undergraduate mathematics students have moderate level of performance.
Table 4. Level of Performance of Undergraduate Mathematics Students
In Table 5, since p value is greater than 0.05, the null hypothesis is accepted at 5% level of significance. It shows that there is no significant difference in the performance of undergraduate students with regard to locality of college and type of family.
Table 5. Significance of Difference in Performance of Undergraduate Mathematics Students with regard to Selected Variables
In this table, since p value is less than 0.05, the null hypothesis is rejected at 5% level of significance. It shows that there is significant difference in the performance of undergraduate students with regard to gender and nature of college.
The mean scores show that performance of the students of female students is more than the male students and the mean scores show that performance of the students of Women’s college performed well than the students of coeducation college.
In Table 6, since p value is greater than 0.05, the null hypothesis is accepted at 5% level of significance. It shows that there is no significant difference in performance of undergraduate students with regard to nature of management.
Table 6. the 'F' Values in Performance of Undergraduate Mathematics Students with regard to Age and Nature of Management
In Table 7, since p value is less than 0.01, the null hypothesis is rejected at 1% level of significance. It shows that there exists a significant and positive correlation between undergraduate mathematics student's general intelligence and performance.
Table 7. Relationship in General Intelligence and Performance of Undergraduate Mathematics Students
The undergraduate students aged below 19 have more intelligence than aged 19 and above. Intelligence may not depend on experience. This is because 19 and above 19 aged students have low intelligence, then the special intelligence test and program are given to 19 and above aged students.
The general intelligence of the Women’s college students have more than the students of co-education colleges. These findings are found very interesting because Women’s college students have more extension activities and intelligence programme. So the general intelligence for providing critical thinking, problem solving ability based activities, and to overcome subordination through orientation exposure program are improved. Gupta’s (2011) study findings support these results, as adolescent girls with low intelligence are more prone to depression as compared to adolescent girls with high intelligence. Female teacher trainees were found to be more intelligent as compared to male teacher trainees (Husain, 2011).
The undergraduate mathematics students of government colleges have more general intelligence than the students of aided and self-finance colleges. In order to improve the intelligence of aided and selffinancing college, one must help to cultivate good study habits.
Pietsch et al.’s (2003) study supports this finding, where the performance of female students is more than the male students. Study groups should be formed in the college to help in cooperative learning. These groups will also help the weaker students to perform.
There exists significant and positive correlation between undergraduate mathematics student's general intelligence and performance. This finding supports Aswal (2001), Jadhav and Patil (2010), Gupta (2010), and Shively and Ryan’s (2013) studies that there exists a significant correlation between intelligence and achievement in mathematics
The conclusion that could be derived from this study is that majority of the undergraduate mathematics students have moderate level of general intelligence. It is endorsed that the undergraduate mathematics students aged below 19 had more general intelligence than those aged 19 and above. It is found that the undergraduate mathematics students of government colleges had more general intelligence than the students of aided and selffinance colleges. The reason may be that the government college admissions are purely based on merit. It is observed that most of the undergraduate mathematics students had moderate level of performance in mathematics. Moderate level of general intelligence could lead to moderate level of performance. It is found that the performance of the female students is more than the male students and also female students have more sincerity and obedience than the male students. The performance of students of Women’s colleges is more than the students of coeducation colleges. The teen-age disturbance at women college may be minimal than the co-education colleges. Peer discussion and safety environment may also influence the performance. This study proved that general intelligence and performance of undergraduate mathematics students are positively correlated.