EFFECT OF CONCEPT-MAPPING INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGY ON SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ INTEREST AND ACHIEVEMENT IN GEOMETRY IN BICHI EDUCATIONAL ZONE, KANO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Abstract This study investigated the effects of concept- mapping instructional strategy on secondary school students’ interest and achievement in geometry. The major objectives of the study were to: find out the effect of concept mapping instructional strategy on the academic achievement and interest of students, find out the differential effect of concept-mapping instructional strategy on academic achievement and interest of male and female students and find out the interaction effect of concept mapping instructional strategy and gender on students’ academic achievement in geometry. This study adopted a quasi-experimental research design namely a non-equivalent pretest-posttest control group research design in which intact classes were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. A sample of three hundred and ten (310) students was drawn from four single sex senior secondary schools in Bichi Educational Zone of Kano State. Specifically, the sample was made up of 170 males and 140 females from the selected schools. Four research questions and five hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The instruments used for data collection during the pre-test and post-test consisted of a geometry achievement test (GAT) and geometry interest scale (GIS). The GAT consisted of 50 multiple choice questions and 6 essay type questions on circle theorems, bearings, sine and cosine rules while the GIS consisted of 25 items questionnaire on interest towards mathematics generally and geometry in particular. The GAT was validated by specialists in mathematics education and measurement and evaluation using table of specifications constructed for the multiple choice and essay tests. The multiple choice test had average difficulty and discrimination indices of 0.39 and 0.52 respectively. The reliabilities of the multiple choice test items and geometry interest scale were established using the coefficient of internal consistency based on Cronbach Alpha ( ).The reliability coefficients for the GAT and GIS were 0.64 and 0.73 respectively. The data collected from the pre-test and post-test were subjected to statistical analysis using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22.0. The research questions were answered using descriptive statistics while the hypotheses for the study were tested using t-test statistics and the Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) with pre-test scores as covariates at 0.05 level of significance. The findings from the study showed that: concept- mapping instructional strategy was more effective than the conventional method in improving students’ academic achievement and interest in geometry, there was no significant difference between the achievement of male and female students from the experimental group in geometry and there was a significant difference in the achievement in the interest of male and female students in geometry.

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