EFFECT OF ETHNOMATHEMATICS TEACHING APPROACH ON SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN LOCUS IN ISOKO NORTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA
Keywords:
Academic achievement, lecture method, ethnomathematics teaching approach, locus,Abstract
This study investigated the effect of the ethnomathematics teaching approach on senior secondary
school students’ academic achievement in locus in Isoko North Local Government Area of Delta
State, using Vygotsky’s (1978) Social Constructivist Theory. The study was guided by three
research questions and three hypotheses tested at a 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted a
quasi-experimental research design, specifically the pretest-posttest non-randomised control group
design. The population of the study comprised 1,428 Senior Secondary School Two (SSII) students
in public secondary schools in Isoko North Local Government Area. A sample of 252 students
drawn from four intact classes in four selected public secondary schools was used for the study.
The instrument for data collection was the Locus Achievement Test (LAT), which contained 50
multiple-choice items selected from past WAEC Mathematics question papers, from 2015 to 2025.
The reliability of the instrument was established using the Kuder-Richardson Formula 21 (KR
21), and a reliability coefficient of 0.70 was obtained. Mean and standard deviation were used to
answer the research questions, while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the
hypotheses. The findings revealed that students taught locus, using the ethnomathematics teaching
approach, achieved significantly better results than those taught using the lecture method. The
findings also showed no significant difference between the achievement scores of male and female
students taught using the ethnomathematics teaching approach, and no significant interaction
effect between teaching approach and gender on students’ achievement in locus was observed. The
study concluded that the ethnomathematics teaching approach is an effective and gender-inclusive
teaching approach for improving students’ academic achievement in locus. It was therefore
recommended among others that Mathematics teachers should adopt this approach in the teaching
of locus and other Mathematics concepts in secondary schools.
