Influence of two modes of instructional methods on students’ academic achievement in senior secondary school mathematics in Afijio Local Government Area of Oyo

Abstract

The increase in the failure rate of students sitting for final year exams, for example, West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) in mathematics, is a serious concern to both students, teachers, and parents. A review of the WASSCE results statistics by the National Bureau of Statistics (2016-2018) indicated that the achievement of learners in mathematics knowledge, especially in Oyo State in private senior secondary schools, continued to reduce. For example, the percentage of students who have 5% credits and above, including Mathematics is 24% in 2016, the performance reduced to 16.8% in 2017 while in 2018 the result remained at 17.2% [1]. Also, a review of the Chief Examiner’s comment on students’ weaknesses in general mathematics paper two from (2009-2018) shows that students’ weaknesses are primarily expressed in the areas of circle geometry and its application, word problems, and interpretation of graphs [2]. In dealing with these weaknesses, the Chief Examiner suggested that teachers should use instructional aids in teaching and learning processes, teachers should give more worked examples during class lessons and a more appropriate teaching method be employed. Therefore, this research work was carried out to examine if a change in teaching method will influence students’ academic performance in Mathematics. In this research, the two methods adopted by the researcher are the Traditional (chalk and talk) method and the Montessori (self-discovery) method. The tools used for data collection were Mathematics Achievement Test (M. A. T), interview, and field observation. Analysis of the results gathered revealed that students that were taught using the Montessori method had a cumulative 57.1% pass. In comparison, their counterparts who used the traditional way had an overall 49.6% pass. These findings revealed that participants from the experimental group performed better than students in the control group.