Abstract
There have been perennial concerns on the low academic performance of students among researchers and other education stakeholders. Innovative teaching strategies have, therefore, gained prominence in the field of mathematics education. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of a social constructivist instructional strategy on students’ performance in algebra. The present study is quasi-experimental, and its type is a posttest control group involving 154 secondary school students that are randomly selected across four intact classes. The random selection of students to treatment and control controls is assumed to improve the validity of the results. Two research questions are raised, and two null hypotheses are formulated and tested atp≤0.05level of significance. One research instrument, algebra performance test (APT), was developed, pilot-tested (test-retest reliability coefficient of 0.897), and used to measure students’ performance in both treatment and control groups. The data are analyzed using independent samplet-tests. The findings indicate that there are significant differences in the mean performance scores between experimental (mean = 16.05, SD = 2.74) and control (mean = 11.46, SD = 2.49) groups,t(152) = 10.83,p<0.05. These findings may be interpreted to be evidence of the effectiveness of the social constructivist instructional strategy in improving performance in algebra better than the conventional teaching method. Also, a significant difference exists between the mean performance scores of males (mean = 17.83, SD = 2.82) and females (mean = 14.72, SD = 1.77) in the experimental group (t(80) = 6.11,p<0.05). Thus, the effect of the social constructivist instructional strategy on students’ performance in algebra is gender-sensitive. Based on these findings, some recommendations are made to students, teachers, parents, administrators, and other stakeholders.
Highlights
Mathematics is given adequate attention and emphasized in the Nigerian school curriculum, right from primary through secondary to tertiary institutions
Despite the effort of the government, teachers, and other education stakeholders including students, it is regrettable that many students continue to struggle with mathematics and perform low in both school-based and national examinations [1]. is is evident in the persistent students’ low performance on national examinations such as the senior secondary school certificate examinations that are conducted by both the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and National Examinations Council (NECO)
Research Design. e current study adopts a posttest control group quasi-experimental research design. is involves an experimental group whose students are taught algebra using a social constructivist instructional strategy and a control group whose students are taught algebra using the conventional method of teaching. e two groups are assumed to be relatively equivalent in their academic achievements before the treatment since they are both public school intact classes and are randomly assigned to the groups
Summary
Mathematics is given adequate attention and emphasized in the Nigerian school curriculum, right from primary through secondary to tertiary institutions. Obioma [3] identified poor teaching strategy as one of the factors that impede students’ understanding of mathematics which leads to poor performance in the subject. Others have identified teacher efficacy as an important variable for a successful implementation of innovative teaching strategies to bring about improved performance in students (e.g., [5]). On this basis, several teaching and learning strategies have been proposed with their being effectiveness investigated in both quantitative and qualitative empirical studies
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