Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) in Increasing Learners' Conceptual Understanding of Geometry

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Cognitive skills are what separate the good learners from mentally challenged learners. Without developed cognitive skills, children fall behind because they are not able to integrate new information as they are taught it. The sad truth is that most students move on to the next grade before they have mastered the basic academic skills like reading, writing, and math because they havenot developed cognitive skills.

METHODS

The descriptive one-group design was used. The learners were divided into four groups according to their learning styles; visual, aural, read/write, and kinesthetic. They were given pre-test to assess their prior knowledge before the researcher use the Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) approach and module which was validated by 20 mathematics teachers for several days. Then, the learners were given post-test.

RESULTS

The instructional material was found to be highly acceptable in terms of activity, consistency, contents, evaluation, objectives, and usability; it showed that the visual learners excelled more in pre-test while the aural learners garnered the highest mean in their post-test; the use of CGI was able to have a great improvement to the learners' performance regardless of their learning styles but had more impact on the performance of the aural learners.

DISCUSSIONS

This study reveals the differences between the scores of the learners in the post-test and pre-test were calculated for each type of learner. These scores were deemed as the increase in scores between the pre-test and post-test. The higher the increases in scores for a specific type of learner, the greater the benefits of CGI for that learner. ANOVA was performed on the increase in scores. It is recommended that Mathematics teachers should assess first their students regarding their learning styles. Then, group them according to their learning styles and subject them to CGI in order to increase their conceptual understanding of Geometry.