Effect of differentiated instructional strategies on students’ retention in geometry in FCT senior secondary schools, Abuja, Nigeria

Abstract

The effect of differentiated instructional strategies on students’ retention in geometry in senior secondary schools was examined. The study employed experimental research design of pretest, posttest control group. The area of this study is Abuja Municipal Area Council, the Federal Capital Territory. The target population was the entire mathematics student in senior secondary class 2 (SS2) in the area. The simple random sampling technique was adopted and used to select two senior schools and 100 subjects for the study. Researcher-designed Geometry Achievement Test (GAT) containing 25 multiple choice items with reliability coefficient of 0.90 was used to measure students’ academic achievement before and after treatment. The researcher taught the experimental and control groups for six weeks. At the beginning and end of the six weeks GAT was administered as a pre-test and post-test to the students in the two groups. The result shows among others that differentiated instructional strategies was more effective in promoting meaningful learning and enhancing mathematics students’ achievement than the conventional method (Z₉₈=11.320, p<.05). The result of the post-post-test administered to the experimental and control group students’ four weeks after the first post-test also show that retention ability was significantly higher in the experimental group students than in the control group student (z₉₈= 13.876, p<.05). Conclusion from these findings led to the recommendation that Mathematics teachers and educators should adopt the Differentiated instructional strategies as an Innovative, efficient and effective strategy in teaching geometry concepts in Mathematics.

Keywords: Differentiated instruction, Lecture , Cognitive Achievement, Retention ability, Geometry