Gauging the educational efficacy of geometrical manipulatives in teaching the curriculum contents

Abstract

This study examines the condition on whether or not there is an advantage on integrating manipulatives in the instruction against traditional teaching involving concept building and students’ performance in geometry. To well achieve this objective, 48 Grade-9 students from a remote public school and island in the Philippines were invited and were then divided into control and experiment groups. After such inferences, empirical results showed that there was no significant mean difference on the scores between the two groups, which implies that one method does not outperform the other. Indeed, post-evaluation revealed that there are other variables which trigger the variation of scores from these groups, respectively, as shared by the subjects themselves. Thus, it is proposed that future relevant researches, shall peek into those variables that can nonetheless support the efficacy of intended curriculum contents and correspondingly address the diverse learning styles.

Keywords: Education, manipulative, mathematics, remote island;