Learning Style-Based Module and Grade Seven Students' Performance in Statistics

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

The “Trends in Mathematics and Science Study” in 2003 showed that Philippines' 8th grade students' skills and competencies in Math ranked a pitiful 42nd out of 46 participating countries while the Philippine 4th grade students placed 23rd out of 25 participating countries (Carballo, 2014). Locally speaking, the latest National Achievement Test revealed that Punta Integrated School placed last among 21 schools in Calamba City in Mathematics to be which is a fact that drives the researcher to conduct this study.

METHODS

A quasi-experimental design was utilized in this study to compare the formative tests and post-test results of the two groups of respondents-comparison and experimental group. Forty-six student-respondents were considered in the first group who have counterparts on the second one based on their pre-test scores for a total of ninety-two student-respondents. Learning styles of the experimental group were also considered to ensure that there was an equal number of members from three subgroups-visual learners, auditory learners, and kinesthetic learners. The researcher used the VAK inventory of Neil D. Fleming to determine the learning style of every student-respondent. On the other hand, an adapted validation tool was used to determine the degree of adequacy of the developed learning style-based module and a total of fifteen-five psychometricians and ten mathematics specialists were requested to validate the learning style-based module.

RESULTS

It was found that the developed learning style-based module was generally Very Adequate to use in teaching Statistics to Grade 7 students with the overall mean of 4.67. The organization, presentation, relevance of the activities, language and the measures of constructs were considered. There was a significant difference between the performances of the experimental group and the comparison group as revealed by the computed p-value of 0.0038 which was less than the level of significance of 0.01.

DISCUSSIONS

Visual learners performed best among the student-respondents in experimental group. Thus, developed module for the visual learners effectively transferred learning. Student-respondents in experimental group performed better than those who were in controlled one during formative assessments and post-test. There is a significant difference between the performances of the two groups of student-respondents-experimental and comparison groups. Thus, the developed learning style-based module was effective.