Using Differentiated Instruction in Improving the Academic Achievement of Students in General Mathematics

Abstract

Every learner is unique. Teaching students that have individual differences and with different learning styles is a big responsibility of the teachers that need to develop and enhance. Differentiated instruction aligned with different learning styles of the students can promote individual learning. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of differentiated instruction in the academic achievement of grade eleven students in General Mathematics. To meet the objectives of the study, the researcher used a quasi-experimental research method which is designed to gather information based on the outcome of the experiment. The participants were purposively chosen for the control group and the experimental group. The experimental group was exposed to differentiated instruction for two months and the control group to traditional teaching instructions. Grasha-Riechmann Student Learning Style Scale was used to identify the students learning styles and served as the basis for designing differentiated activities in General Mathematics. The majority of the respondents both in the control group and in the experimental group are participant and independent. Showing that the two groups are likely the same when it comes to their preferred learning styles. A pretest was administered before the experiment, result shown that the mean score of the control group was 17.33 while the experimental group was 17.27 indicating that their means were relatively close and both groups have a descriptive rating of below-average showing that the achievement of the two groups is likely the same before the experiment. After the intervention, the teacher conducted a post-test and results revealed that the experimental group got a higher mean score of 38.17 with a descriptive rating of above average compared with the control group with a mean score of 31.93 and average as its descriptive rating. The mean score of the students in the pretest of both groups is relatively close showing that the two groups are equal. The post-test revealed that the experimental group got a higher mean score compared with the control group. It can be identified through the mean scores that the students perform better in class after being exposed to differentiated instruction. It is recommended that teachers should be encouraged to use differentiated instruction based on the learning styles to provide alternative challenging lessons to students.