Inpartalfulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of master of arts in curriculum and instruction
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Date
2004-06
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Addis Ababa Universty
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of active teaching method on
grade three mathematics achievement. Active teaching (other terms are also
synonymously used throughout the paper), as the process-product research approaches
explain, refer to teacher behavior in the classroom. Identified with the teaching model,
there are thirty four teacher behaviors categorized in five blocks (see Appendix II). The
subjects taken for this study were IS grade three mathematics teachers randomly selected
from 10 primary schools in Mekelle and their students as well. The students (numbering
808) of these teachers were tested at the beginning and end of the training program. The
teachers were randomly assigned to three groups: trained teachers observed while
implementing the method, trained teachers but unobserved and untrained teachers who
simply taught in their style and hence 5 teachers in each group. Both trained groups (the
observed and unobserved teachers) were given a 24- page manual on the teaching model
and were also trained for five days lasting two hours each. Then, starting the first week of
November they continued to instruct in their regular teaching schedules during the study
period. Both the trained observed & untrained teachers were observed three times each
spaced nearly a month so as to see to what extent the teaching behaviors suggested in the
manual were implemented. The trained unobserved group was simply used to see
whether the presence of the observer (video recorder) had an effect to the trained
observed teachers. The proportions of implementation of the teaching behaviors by both
observed groups were computed using percentages and the impact of these teaching
behaviors or the influence of the active teaching model on student achievement at the
grade level was analyzed using the t-test. The statistical impact on student achievement
was accepted as significant at 0.05 a level or better.
Results of the analysis revealed that the proportion of implementation of most of the teaching
behaviors was greater in the trained observed teachers than in the untrained teachers. Similarly,
posttesting results indicated that students taught by the trained teachers had better mathematics
mean scores than students of the untrained teachers and hence could be concluded that active
teaching method had an influence on student academic achievement.
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Keywords
curriculum and instruction