Improving Secondary School Students’ Achievement in Bearing through Polya’s Problem Solving Strategy.

Abstract

Quasi-experimental design was adopted in this study. Pretest-posttest, non- equivalent control group was used. Six intact classes, three of which were randomly assigned to experimental and the other three to control groups are used for the study. Sample of the study consisted of 284 SSII students from Enugu Education Zone. Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. Bearing Achievement Test (BAT) was used for data collection. BAT was constructed by the researcher and validated by three research experts. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while the hypotheses were tested at .05 level of significance using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). Experimental groups were taught using Polya‟s Problem Solving Strategy (PPSS) while control groups were taught the same topic using expository method. Major findings of the study revealed that students taught bearing with PPSS achieved higher than those taught with expository method. There was no significant difference between the mean achievement scores of male and female students in the study. It was recommended that Mathematics teachers should adopt PPSS for teaching Bearing and distances in senior secondary schools.