EFFECT OF TWO TEACHING METHODS OF TEACHING QUADRATIC EQUATION ON SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCES

ABSTRACT

The study was an attempt to investigate the eect of two teaching methods of teaching quadratic equation on the academic performance of the students. One hundred students comprising two streams of the SSII students in two secondary schools in Nsukka local Government Area of Enugu state were used. Four lesson plans and then essay questions were used for the study. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used in testing the hypothesis and answering the research questions. Result showed that students taught by Discovery method performed better than their counterpart taught by expository method of solving quadratic equation.

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1. 1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

There are many ways of doing many things we encounter in our environment and all life endeavors. The field of education is not an exception. In imparting knowledge to learners with the purpose of achieving a desired positive objective in the end, there are several ways to adopt for that. In overcoming a task, although there are many ways of doing so, one could think of the best and most efficient and quickest means to overcome such a task. Hence we are interested in not only knowing ways of doing things but knowing the best way of doing that in order to achieve the desired objective within the shortest possible time. In the teaching of any mathematics topic, there is always a controversy on which method that can serve best. This is because mathematics is one of the most important subjects in the curriculum of most countries and one of the most difficult subjects to students and adults, something that has been expensively studied by researchers such as Nnadozie (1995) and others. It is then necessary that we examine two methods out of many methods of teaching and determine the best and most suitable method with respect to teaching quadratic equations.

There are many methods as there are many concepts to be learnt which demands that efforts should be made by teachers to discover the best method for each concept for quickest achievement of the objectives.

1. 2 Statement of Problem

It has been observed that student run away from mathematics class. The significance of mathematics is undoubted. It is invaluable in all facets of learning in our society. The fact that there are many methods of teaching mathematics call for a critical study of those methods and possibly discover the effective approach that could be used in handling the various mathematical problems. The approaches to solving quadratic equations are many, but there is need to determine whether those approaches yield similar results or different results as the case may be when applied. The poor performance of students in the examination on this note has been always attributed to the teacher’s method, which is often said to be poor. Hence there is need to know how teaching method can really influence academic excellence. Other reasons have been given for this poor performance of students by many authorities. Ezike and Obodo (1990) observed that some of the students feel that mathematics is uninteresting because they find it difficult to understand and consequently perform poorly in it. Ezike noted also that poor qualified mathematics teachers, Lack of qualified mathematics teachers and the students’ negative attitude towards the subject contribute to their poor performance in mathematics. Part of factors affecting mathematics achievement could be related to teachers’ teaching method which according to A.E Eze (2002) is a way or procedure of teaching. On the basic of the foregoing, therefore, this study was designed to investigate the impact of methods of teaching quadratic equation on students’ performance.