A comparison of two teaching strategies on post-secondary developmental mathematics students

Abstract

This pre-post comparison study was conducted at a two-year institution with a sample of 29 post-secondary developmental mathematics students. The concept attainment instructional strategy was compared to the traditional lecture/discussion instructional strategy. The focus of the concept attainment strategy was on making the connections between the physical/visual, oral, and symbolic representations of the mathematical concepts. Cell means and the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were used to examine the data. In the ANCOVAs the pretest was the covariate. The two groups were randomly assigned a treatment since the random placement of the students was not possible. On the 40-item test instrument the covariate was significant in all of the analyses, with a two-way interaction occurring between group and age. A possible influence resulting from ethnicity was indicated by the .055 significance level when it was examined with group. Twenty-two of the 40 items dealt with topics specifically covered during the semester. For the 22-item test, there was a significant difference for the two-way interaction of group and age and for the main effects of group and ethnicity. The course success rate, as defined by final course grades, was greater for the concept attainment group than for the traditional lecture/discussion approach. It appears that the connecting activities that were provided to the experimental group gave them a better understanding of all of the topics covered during the course. The test instrument did not appear to measure all of the learning that was occurring during the semester. From observations, it was evident that factors other than those which can be controlled in the classroom affected student performance. Prior knowledge greatly influenced the amount of new knowledge which the students acquired. Because of the small sample size, any generalizations should be considered with great caution. This study provides an insight into the use of the concept attainment strategy which needs further investigations with larger samples.