The Effectiveness of a Technology-Based Isometrical Transformation Flipped Classroom Learning Strategy in Improving Students’ Higher Order Thinking Skills

Abstract

Isometric Transformation is one of the essential topics in the Malaysian Secondary School Mathematics Curriculum. In general, Malaysia’s achievements in Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) were found to be less encouraging, especially in the field of Geometry. This fact clearly implies that the mastery of Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) of Malaysian students is still low, especially in the topic of Isometric Transformation. Therefore, this study was conducted to develop Flipped Classroom Learning Strategy (FCLS) activities and evaluate their effectiveness in increasing Malaysian secondary school students’ HOTS in Isometric Transformation. This study was conducted in two stages whereby the first stage involved the development of FCLS activities, while the second stage was run to evaluate the effectiveness of FCLS activities in enhancing students’ HOTS for the topic of Isometric Transformation. The development of activities involved three phases. The first phase was the needs analysis phase which involved a preliminary survey towards students’ learning difficulties at each level of HOTS in the topic of Isometric Transformation. The second phase was the design and development stage of FCLS activities, involving the learning activities inside and outside the classroom in line with the topic of Isometric Transformation. The last phase was the evaluation phase which involved the content validation and evaluation on the suitability of FCLS activities by 11 experts. Next, the second stage was a quasi-experimental design which involved 131 Form 2 students from two secondary schools in Johor. The study sample was divided into two groups which were the treatment group and the control group. The study was conducted over eight weeks. Mann-Whitney test results showed a significant difference (p =.000 <.05) in the overall level and also for all of the four levels of HOTS for both control and treatment groups. The results of this study showed that the teaching and learning process that used FCLS activities successfully created an effective learning situation in improving students’ HOTS in the topic of Isometric Transformation. In conclusion, these FCLS activities should be used as guidelines for educators to increase HOTS in mathematics education.