Group didactical games: Their effect on students' mathematics performance

Abstract

In the school under study, the mathematics performance of the students was low and the students have difficulty in solving mathematical problems. The researcher chose Group Didactical Games to help students become more proficient in mathematics. Thus, this experimental study attempted to find out whether or no f group didactical games would be effective in improving the mathematics performance of the high school students. The participants of the study were 62 third year high school students ranked according to their GPA in second year and randomly assigned to Didactical Games Group (DG group) and Non-Didactical Games Group (NDG Group) using the flip coin method. Both DG and NDG groups were divided into five sub-groups and were purposively chosen to include all types of students. The experiment was conducted for 9 weeks during which the pretest-postest design was utilized. A validated teacher-made test to measure the mathematics performance of the students was given before and after the experiment. Sources of data included class observation, students' interviews, students' journals, and results of mathematics performance test. Results showed that the students' pretest mathematics performance in both groups was low and not significantly different. Moreover, the posttest mathematics performance of both groups was average still no significant difference existed although the mean gain of the DG group was numerically higher than that of the NDG group. Both treatments showed positive effects on the students' mathematics performance when used as teaching strategies.