Effectiveness of a Language Based Program in School Mathematics on Students Understanding of Statistics
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Western University College of Scienceand Technology, Kakamega, Kenya
Publication date: 2006-12-23
EURASIA J. Math., Sci Tech. Ed 2006;2(3):79-87
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ABSTRACT
Mathematical knowledge and understanding is important not only for scientific progress and
development but also for its day-to-day application in social sciences and arts, government, business and management
studies and household chores. But the general performance in school mathematics in Kenya has been poor over the
years. There is evidence that students have problems in understanding and interrelating the symbols and special
language structure as used in mathematics. Nevertheless in a recent study, a program called Socialized Mathematical
Language (SML) module was designed to enhance student’s learning outcomes in school mathematics. The study was
carried out in a real classroom setting that involved comparisons between the treatment and control groups. A Solomon
Four Group quasi-experimental design was employed to involve four high schools in Bungoma District. A total of 156
form two students enrolled in four intact classes from the selected schools were exposed to the same content in statistics
for a period of two weeks. Three dependent measures namely the Mathematics Achievement Test (MAT), the
Mathematics Skill Test (MST) and the Mathematics Classroom Environment Questionnaire (MCEQ) were used to
assess the effectiveness of the program on students’ academic achievement in understanding of statistics, their skill
performance and perceptions of the classroom environment during statistics lessons. The results affirm statistically
significant learning gains in favour of the treatment groups. The study concludes that the use of SML program has a
major implication for school mathematics instruction in the area of statistics.