Abstract

EFFECT OF IMMEDIATE REINFORCEMENT LEARNING STRATEGY ON THE SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS? ACHIEVEMENT IN MATHEMATICS

Ogoke, C. J., Anyanwu A.,Osuji, N. C and Nwaneri, M. O

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Abstract The performance of secondary school students in Mathematics in West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and other external examinations has remained consistently poor. This phenomenon has remained a source of concern to the researcher, parents and the nation at large, and information available to the researcher revealed that the effect of Immediate Reinforcement Learning Strategy (IRLS) on mathematics achievement of secondary school students has not been given adequate attention. Against this background, the study wants to find out the effect of Immediate Reinforcement Learning Strategy (IRLS) on themathematics achievement of secondary school studentsin Okigwe Education Zone two of Imo State. Two research questions and two null hypotheses guided the study. Quasi experimental design; specifically the pretest- posttest non-randomized control group design was adopted. The population for the study comprised all the senior secondary one (SS1) students. From this population, a sample of 88(33 male and 55 female) students participated in the studybased on intact classes. One instrument: Mathematics Achievement Test (MAT) was used for data collection. Two instructional tools: Lesson plan and Worksheet were used. The instruments and the lesson plans were face and content validated by four experts. The reliability of MAT was established using Kuder-Richardson formula 20 (KR-20) and the coefficient of internal consistency was found to be 0.74. ANCOVA was used to test the hypotheses at the 0.05 level of significance. From the results, it was observed that: Students taught with IRLS performed well. Also, the achievements of students in mathematics were not influenced by gender on the use of IRLS. Based on the findings, the researcher recommended among others that IRLS should be considered in any classroom situation for effective teaching and learning by most teachers, and conclusion was made. From the findings presented and discussed, it was concluded that the use of immediate reinforcement learning strategy in the teaching and learning of trigonometry is effective and can enhance the achievement of students in mathematics. Also, it was concluded that there is no influence of gender on mathematics achievement of students. That is to say, the use of immediate reinforcement learning strategy (IRLS) is not gender selective. Key words: Mathematics, Achievement, Immediate Reinforcement, Learning Strategy

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