The Role of Mother Tongue as a Medium of Instruction

The study established that more than half of the teachers used mother tongue in teaching mathematics in lower primary schools. The results revealed that teachers rarely used mother tongue in teaching mathematics. Teachers were using mother tongue to teach: Counting, recognition, matching, classification, addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication.In regard to the influence of teachers' training on the use of mother tongue, almost all teachers had been certified with four-fifth of them having fundamental training in teaching. The higher the level of teachers' training, the higher the mean score in use of mother tongue in teaching mathematics. On the relationship between teachers' teaching experience and use of mother tongue in teaching mathematics, results revealed that, the more the teachers' teaching experience, the more they used mother tongue in teaching mathematics. Teachers' level of motivation to use mother tongue in teaching mathematics was average. The results also indicated that the more motivated teachers were the more they tended to use mother tongue in teaching mathematics.