Discovery Approachin Teaching Mathematics and Academic Performance of Lipa City National High School Students: Towards the Development of Learning Exempla

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Teachers are faced with a lot of challenges amid their will and desire for a paradigm shift. Challenge is the diversity of learners. Aside from this, the approach itself entails a lot of constraints in terms of lesson content, method of instruction and assessment of student learning.

In LCNHS where the researcher is a Mathematics teacher, the discovery approach is also utilized to augment the school's need for higher academic achievement. The researcher aims to gauge the teachers' level of difficulty in the mentioned areas. The assessment shall be a basis for the development of learning exemplary.

METHODS

The study utilized the descriptive design. It is an evaluation study. A survey questionnaire was used. Respondents were asked to assess the difficulties based on the given indicators and to submit an average MPS of their handled sections with the use of the approach. The data were then retrieved, tallied, statistically treated and interpreted.

RESULTS

The difficulties encountered by the teachers in the use of discovery approach in teaching in terms of lesson content, method of instruction and assessment of student learning are all found to be of Great Extent thus rejecting the hypothesis.

The relationship between discovery approach in teaching mathematics and the students' academic performances has a computed coefficient correlation value signifying a low positive correlation. Therefore, the findings portrayed the significant relationship between the discovery approach employed by the teachers in teaching mathematics and students' academic, thus rejecting the second hypothesis.

DISCUSSIONS

The revealed difficulties encountered in terms of content might be because of the general orientation of teachers in terms of lesson planning. Moreover, teachers might be challenged to bridge between the traditional and discovery type of lessons. While the difficulty in terms of method of instruction might be because of the incomprehensive responses generated from the students since they may not be very familiar with the way the discovery approach is employed in class discussion. Furthermore, because of the difficulties identified in other areas, assessment of student learning is inevitably affected. The challenges encountered in lesson planning and delivery impact the way tests and measurements are done. Furthermore, assessment in discovery learning requires different standards from those of traditional teaching. Thus, teachers must be provided with sufficient training and samples of lesson exemplars.