Effect of Cuisenaire Rods’ approach on students’ interest in decimal fractions in junior secondary school, Makurdi Metropolis.

Abstract

This study explored the effectiveness of Cuisenaire Rods’ approach in arousing students’ interest in decimal fractions. Two research questions were posed and three hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. A sample of 200 JS3 students from a randomly selected schools in Makurdi Metropolis of Benue State, served as subjects for the study. A Mathematics Interest Inventory on Decimal Fraction (MIIDF) developed by the researcher and validated by three experts with a reliability coefficient of 0.72 using K-R(21), was used as a research instrument for data collection. Mean, Standard deviation and two way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were used for analyzing the data. The results revealed that Cuisenaire Rods’ approach was very effective in facilitating students’ interest in decimal fractions (F1, 199 =163.077, p<0.05. That though male students benefited more than their female counterparts this benefit was not significant (F1,199=1.483;p>0.05). There was significant interaction effect between method and gender (F1,199=20.848; p<0.05). It was recommended among others that teachers of mathematics should adopt this approach in teaching mathematics in Junior secondary to facilitate students’ interest and hence improve performance in mathematics.

KEY WORDS: Cuisenaire Rods, Students’ interest in mathematics, manipulative activities, hands-on, concrete materials, decimal fractions.