A study of the effectiveness of a teaching unit on length in the metric system

Hackett, Neville Raymond (1976) A study of the effectiveness of a teaching unit on length in the metric system. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a unit in teaching measurement in the metric system to grade seven students. -- To do this the experimenter considered the following questions: -- 1. Is the unit effective in providing a gain in achievement on measurement in the metric system? -- 2. What is the effect of the unit on students' attitudes towards mathematics? -- 3. What are the teachers' attitudes towards the experimental unit? -- 4. How effective is the unit in helping students to reach each objective? -- The design of this study was pre-test, post-test with no control group. The study consisted of presenting a fifteen lesson unit on length in the metric system to 320 grade seven students in ten classes at MacDonald Drive Junior High School, St. John's. Materials for the unit were taken from World of Metric-Activity Book by S. E. Odegard and restructured by the experimenter. -- The experimenter constructed a pre-test and post-test in order to determine the student's achievement on the unit. The pre-test was administered and the post-test was given after the fifteenth lesson. The items on the pre-test and post-test were identical but their order was changed. The items of the post-test were designed to test whether the behavioral objectives had been met. The Connelly Taxonomized Attitude Scale was given as a pre-test, post-test to determine the effect of the unit on student attitudes towards mathematics. An experimenter-made questionnaire was given to each of the six teachers who taught the unit in order to determine the attitudes of teachers towards the unit. -- A gain in achievement was determined by the gain in the mean score from pre-test to post-test on measurement. A gain of 48.7% on the mean score indicated that the students can achieve on the experimental unit. -- A dependent t-test for means was performed on the pre-test, post-test attitude scores of students. A t-value of -0.43 indicated that there was no significant change in the attitudes of students towards mathematics at the .05 level of significance during the teaching of the experimental unit. -- From the questionnaire given to the teachers, responses indicated that -- 1. The unit was easy to read and appropriate for average students. -- 2. Teachers enjoyed teaching the unit and would recommend it to other metric teachers. -- 3. Some teachers felt they would encounter difficulty at the beginning with the activity approach of teaching used in the unit. -- 4. There was an indication that the unit would have some value for the students in the future. -- 5. Teachers indicated that the unit is an aid in "Thinking Metric." -- A behavioral objective was considered met if its corresponding item on the achievement test was correctly answered by over 70% of the students. Four items out of 28 on the achievement post-test were not attained. Consequently, four behavioral objectives were not met.

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