Effects of Using Concept Mapping Strategy on Senior Secondary School Students Achievement and Retention in Geometry
The study determines the effects of concept mapping strategy on senior secondary school students' achievement and retention in geometry. A sample of sixty (60) SS II Mathematics students from two secondary schools in Azare metropolis was drawn. An achievement test, Geometry Achievement Test (GAT) was used to measure the sampled students in the learned materials taught to the experimental group using concept mapping strategy and to the controlled group using conventional approach. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while T test was used to test the null hypotheses. The findings of the study revealed that students exposed to concept mapping strategy achieved more in geometry than those taught with conventional approach. and knowledge of retention was significantly higher in students taught geometry with concept mapping than those who were taught with conventional approach. It was recommended among others that teachers should attend regular in service innovation orientation training and workshop to abreast of new techniques and skills. Concept mapping should be incorporated in the secondary school Mathematics curriculum as a technique in teaching Mathematics. Introduction The importance of Mathematics to modern culture of science and technology has been well recognized and accepted worldwide (Eze, 1997; Bajah, 2000; Eguavon, 2002; Fakuade, 1997) According to Ukeje (1997, the increasing importance and attention given to mathematics stem from the fact that without science there is no modern technology and without modern technology, there is no modern society. In other words, Mathematics is the precursor and queen of science and technology and indispensable single element in modern societal development. However, despite the urgent need for a good output in the Mathematics performance of students, the reverse is the case, as students' performances in Mathematics continue to International Journal of Education and Evaluation ISSN 2489 0073 Vol. 2 No.2 2016 www.iiardpub.org IIARD International Institute of Academic Research and Development Page 39 deteriorate year after year (Galadima, 1998) Adeniyi (1998) and Ojo (1990) have both attempted to find out some reasons why students' perform poorly in Mathematics. The result of their finding indicated poor quality of instructional techniques employed by teachers as major cause of poor performance among secondary school students in mathematics. One of the Mathematics concepts that have possible means of de abstracting Mathematics is geometry, and the teaching and learning of geometry still remain difficult (Galadima, 1998) Also in a study to identify difficult topics in Mathematics, Ochepa (1999) reported that about 89% of secondary school students responded that geometry is difficult. Various researchers identified different methods that will address the problem of students' poor performance in Mathematics. One of such method is the use of concept mapping. This was developed in an educational setting by Joseph Novak in an effort to design better teaching and learning activities (Novak and Godwin, 1984) they further defined concept mapping as a schematic device for representing a set of knowledge meaning embedded in a framework of propositions. Okebukola (1999) defined concept as perceived regularities in event or objects designated by an arbitrary labels. It is against this background the researchers embarked to find out whether the use of concept mapping strategy will improve significantly on students achievement and retention in geometry at senior secondary school level. Statement of the problem Some students have great difficulty in understanding, comprehending and assimilating Mathematical concept taught to them in their classroom. They neither understand the basic computations, logic, fundamental principles not the underlying process that gave rise to Mathematical facts. They therefore, resort to learning by rote, memorization with consistent gross to mass failure of students (Eze, 2008) Based on the foregoing, this study is designed to investigate whether the use of concept mapping strategy would improve significantly students understanding of geometry concepts and hence improve their performance better than the conventional method. Objective of the study Specifically, the study sought to achieve the following objectives: 1. To investigate the extent to which the use of concept mapping will improve the performance of students in geometry. 2. To find out whether the use of concept mapping will improve significantly the mean retention of students in geometry. Research questions 1. Is there any significant difference in the mean achievement score of students taught with concept mapping and those taught using conventional method? 2. Is there any significant difference between the mean retention score of students taught using concept mapping and those taught with conventional method? Research hypothesis 1. H01: There is no significance difference between the mean achievement score of experimental and controlled group at pre test. International Journal of Education and Evaluation ISSN 2489 0073 Vol. 2 No.2 2016 www.iiardpub.org IIARD International Institute of Academic Research and Development Page 40 2. H02: There is no significance difference between students achievement in geometry taught using concept mapping strategy and those taught with conventional method. 3. H03: There is no significance difference between students mean retention score taught using concept mapping strategy and those taught with conventional method.