Constructivism Articles Critical Review

Constructivism Articles Critical Review

 Introduction;A study on the effect of the constructivist approach on the achievement in mathematics of IX standard students is an article that was written by Susanta Roy Chowdhury in 2016. The title of this article aims at analyzing the impacts of the use of the constructivist theory to students in their mathematics test. This article aims to show the importance of using a constructivist approach in teaching rather than the traditional methods of teaching mathematics to the success and achievement of the learners in mathematics.  The constructivist approach has been found useful as it helps in ensuring the active participation of students in the class. Constructivism, according to this article, is a more effective method for teaching and learning, especially in mathematics. According to this article, constructivism has positive effects on the motivation and performance of the students. The result of the constructivist approach to achievement in mathematics of elementary school students is an article that was written by Jagdeep Kaur, Ph.D. & Raman in 2019. The topic of the article focuses on the effects that the approach of constructivism has on the achievements of students in mathematics at elementary school. The article aims at comparing the achievements of students in mathematics between groups taught using the constructivist approach and another group that used conventional methods for learning. The article’s main objective is to find out the main objective of using the constructivist approach to the achievement in mathematics for students. According to this article, the use of the constructivist approach has been viewed as a way of developing the cognitive abilities of learners in mathematics as compared to the use of conventional methods of teaching.A study on the effect of constructivist pedagogy on students’ achievement in mathematics at the elementary level is an article that was written by Dr. Rajendra Kumar Nayak in 2007. The title of the article is evident on the main issue that it focuses on, which is the effect that the use of a constructivist approach would have on the achievement in mathematics for students at the elementary level. The main aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of using the constructivist approach on achievement in mathematics for students at the elementary school. According to the article, the constructivist approach helps in the development of psychological, social, and intellectual elements of the students as compared to other instructional methods.Effects constructivist based instructional strategy on students’ learning outcome in mathematics is an article written by Philomina I. Onwuka in 2014. The title of the article is clear and precise on its focus to the outcome that is expected as a result of using the constructivism strategy as a method of instruction. The main aim of this paper is to determine the effects that the use of the constructivist-based instructional method has on the achievement of learners in mathematics. According to the article, the application of constructivism as an instructional method has helped in the improvement of performance and a better understanding of the learners in mathematics. These articles are a clear indication that the constructivist approach has a significant influence on achievement in mathematics for the learners, and this approach should be, therefore, adopted for teaching science subjects, especially mathematics..

Summary

The purpose of all the articles by all the authors is to prove the impact that the constructivist approach has on the achievement of students in mathematics. The article by Susanta is organized into various sections which include the abstract, introduction, the need of the study, objectives, hypothesis, study design, sample, procedural study details that consists of the three phases, statistical techniques applied, measurement tools, analysis and interpretation of data, discussion, conclusion and finally references. The article by Jagdeep and Raman has its different organization that includes the following sections, abstract, introduction, review of related studies, rationale of the study, objectives of the study, the hypothesis of the study, delimitations of the study, variables of the study, research design, sample, research tool, statistical technique, significant findings, results of the study, suggestions for further research and finally references. The article by Rajendra is organized into different sections which include, abstract, introduction, objectives of the stud, hypothesis of the study, delimitation of the study, sample and sampling techniques, materials and tools used, experimental design used, measuring tools, experimental design and procedure, results and discussion, and finally the references. The article by Philomina is organized into various sections which include, abstract, introduction, statement of the problem, the purpose of the study, research question, hypothesis, methodology, results, discussion, conclusion and recommendation, and finally references.

All these articles have their main points, and I will outline a summary of the main points of a combination of all the articles. All articles suggest that the application of the constructivist approach as an instructional method in mathematics has helped in the improvement of the performance and achievement of the learners as compared to the use of traditional or conventional means. The achievement of both girls and boys was similar since the constructivist approach was useful for both the result of mathematics (Chowdhury, 2016). Students who were taught using the constructivist approach had improved the application and understanding capabilities when compared to other abilities such as skill and knowledge (Chowdhury, 2016; Nayak, 2007).

Critique

Analysis of the objectives

These four articles had similar objectives for the topic of constructivism. The differences in the objectives were only displayed in a few of the instances in some of the articles. The first objective of these articles was to study the effectiveness of using the constructivist approach to the achievement of students in mathematics. Another aim was to compare the performance of students in mathematics when one group was taught using the constructivist approach while the other group was taught using conventional instructional methods. Another objective of the article was an examination of the various dimensions of achievement of elementary school student’s mathematics. The article by Chowdhury also had the aim of studying the effect of using the constructivist approach on the performance in mathematics for students in relation to their gender. The article by Kaur also had additional objectives whereby the author wanted to develop lesson plans and standardized achievement tests that were based on the constructivist instructional method for specific mathematics units. Based on all these objectives of each of the authors, I agree that all objectives were after consideration of one primary point, which was a constructivist instructional method. These objectives suggest that the research conducted by the authors were focused on the achievement in mathematics by learners in schools after the application of the constructivist instructional method. In my opinion, all these objectives were clear, precise, and valid for the research questions, and therefore, I agree with the researchers.

Methods of Collecting Data

Research Design

The research from all these articles applied to quasi-experimental design. This type of design was the most effective since the research was conducted in a setting that random assignment was a challenge, and it was almost impossible (Fife-Schaw, 2006). In my opinion, I support and agree with the authors of these articles in using quasi-experimental since the main focus of the research was the evaluation of the effectiveness of treating two groups; the control and the experimental groups of the study. This research design was, therefore, valid and under the setting and situation of the research.

All the articles used the non-equivalent pre and post-test design whereby an entire class was used for both the control and experimental groups of the study. In the article by Chowdhury, Class IX was used, article by Kaur; VIII grade, article by Nayak; Grade V and article by ONWUKA; senior secondary school one (S.S.S. 1). The non-equivalent design was useful, and I agree with the authors as the groups in the research had not been assigned any conditions randomly, and the groups were not equivalent. The groups were dissimilar in a variety of ways; hence the use of this design was effective. The pre-test and post-test designs were also effective in these researches as the dependent variable was only measured once before the implementation of the treatment and once after implementation of the treatment. In my opinion, this kind of design was useful since the research took a more prolonged duration rather than a single moment for the treatment of all the groups under different phases.

Sampling Method

The articles applied the purposive sampling method. This involved the selection of specific or specific schools for sampling and conducting the research (Tongco, 2007). The article by Chowdhury selected a government secondary school, S.E.B.A situated at Tinsukia. The article by Kuar selected three schools, which include P.N.B, Khalsa Girls, Khalsa College, and Jagat Jyoti senior secondary schools in Amritsar. The article by Nayak selected three different schools in the urban from Bhubaneswar city. The article by ONUKWA selected three senior secondary schools in Ika South, a government area. I agree with the purposive sampling method of selection of the schools by each of the researchers. This is because the school’s selection criteria were based on the judgment that the researcher had when choosing the sample that would participate in the study. The researchers used their judgment on obtaining the representative samples, and this was effective in saving money and time for the researcher and the study. Another reason for my agreement with the researcher’s choice of sampling method was the limited number of participants who were to act as the primary sources of data, the objectives, aims, and the nature of the design of the research.

Sample Size

The sample sizes of each of the articles were different depending on the number of schools selected for the study. The article by Chowdhury has a sample size of 60 students, whereby 30 were the experimental group, and 30 were the control group. The article by Kaur had a sample size of 128 students, whereby 64 students were the control group, and 64 were the experimental group. In the article by Nayak, the sample size was a total of 249 students in which 126 students were the experimental group, and 123 were the control group. In the article by ONUKWA, the sample size was a total of 215 students, whereby 111 students represented the control group, while 104 represented the experimental group. This distribution of the sample size depended on the number of schools under study, and the study with one school had the smallest sample size, while the studies with the three schools have high sample sizes. Therefore, I agree with the researchers on this distribution of the sample sizes.

Research Tools

All the articles incorporated the use of an achievement test in mathematics called the Mathematics Achievement Test (M.A.T.).  This test includes four aspects, namely, skill, application, understanding, and knowledge. The test has both the objective and subjective items from all the parts in the mathematics subject. The co-efficient of M.A.T.’s internal consistency and M.A.T. reliability coefficient was calculated using the Test-Re Test formula to provide a constant coefficient. In each of these articles, the researcher administered a pre-test M.A.T. before the experiment to ensure that there was the same achievement of the control and experimental groups in mathematics. A post-test M.A.T. was also administered after the end of the research to the control and experimental groups for comparison of the mathematics achievements. In my opinion, the application of M.A.T. was necessary for testing the performance of the students in both the control and experimental group during the pre-test and post-test treatment process. This helped in ensuring the standardization of all the groups’ achievement before the experiment, as well as a good comparison of the achievement of the groups in mathematics after the research ended.

Statistical Technique

All the articles used t-test, standard deviation, and mean in the calculation of the results of the study. In my opinion, it was necessary to use a t-test in the analysis of the statistics of the research because the t-test is used in the determination of the presence of a significant difference between the two groups mean which have a relationship in some features.The articles tested the assumptions that were only necessary for the population (Kim, 2015). The use of the standard deviation was needed in the analysis because it measured the dispersion of the dataset between the control and the experimental groups. The use of mean was also necessary for calculating the average scores in the performance of the control and experimental group. Therefore, I agree with these methods of statistics used by the authors in the articles.

Analysis of the Results or findings

The results of all the articles showed that the experimental group category of students showed a higher mean as compared to the control group students when the constructivist instructional method was applied. The mean scores of the M.A.T. test in the mathematics of the control group were 44.3, while that of the experimental group was 46.1 during the pre-test (Chowdhury, 2016). In the post-test results of the M.A.T. test, the mean of the experimental group had increased to 59.5, while that of the control group was 51.5 (Chowdhury, 2016).  The mean scores of the experimental group were 18.78, while that of the control group was 12.75 in the mathematics test, according to one of the articles (Kuar, 2019). In the other article, the mean scores of the pre-test of the experimental group were 18.05, while that of the control group was 16.29 in the mathematics test (Nayak, 2007). In the post-test mathematics mean scores, the experimental group attained a higher mean score of 36.01 as compared to the mean score of the control group, which was 24.70. In the other article, the scenario was similar, whereby the experimental group posted a high mean score of 31.30 in the mathematics test while the control group exhibited a low mean score of 23.42 (ONUKWA, 2014). therefore, I agree with the findings of these articles that the students who were taught using the constructivist instructional methods showed higher performance in the mathematics test as compared to the students taught using traditional or conventional methods. I support this because of the high mean differences showed between the mean scores of the performances between the control and the experimental groups. The use of conventional methods has been demonstrated that the performance of the students does not surpass the students whose teacher applied the constructivist instructional approach.

The students from the experimental group have higher mean scores on the various dimensions of the M.A.T. achievement test as compared to the students using the instructional method of instruction, as shown in the results of the articles. These students have demonstrated an improvement in the application and understanding dimensions of the students’ abilities in mathematics when compared to other dimensions such as skill and knowledge. According to Chowdhury, a significant difference is exhibited between the application and understanding dimensions between the control and the experimental group since their t-values were 2.58 and 3.0, respectively, which was more than the significance level of 0.05 (2016).  There was a lack of significant difference in the skill and knowledge dimensions between the control and the experimental group with t-values of 1.52 and 1.5, respectively, at the significance level of 0.01 (Chowdhury, 2016).

The same differences were also experienced in the article by Kuar, whereby there were significant differences in the achievement dimensions in terms of knowledge, understanding, and application dimensions (2019). According to Nayak, there was no significant difference experienced between the skill and the knowledge dimensions between the control and experimental group since both had t-values of 1.06 and 0.51, which was lower than the significance level of 0.05 in the table value (2007). The experimental group had a higher mean in the understanding dimension of 22.16 as compared to the control group that had 14.23 (Nayak, 2007). this was similar in the application dimension that favored the experimental group with a mean of 19.69 as compared to that of the control group that was 11.34 (Nayak, 2007).  The t-value showed that there existed a significant difference in application and understanding dimension score between the control and experimental group with t-values of 7.35 and 8.93 at the 0.01 significance level (Nayak, 2007). I agree with the author’s findings regarding the effects of the use of a constructivist approach on the achievement test dimensions of knowledge, understanding, application, and skill. Students whose teachers apply constructivist instructional methods have exhibited high application and understanding abilities in mathematics as compared to students who use conventional instructional methods and as compared to other abilities such as skill and knowledge. The constructivist approach had an effect on the performance of the learners in mathematics based on their application and understanding the learners can use the concepts they learn in the construction of knowledge.  The use of the constructivist instructional method was also useful for using in both girls and boys as they exhibited an improvement in their achievement in mathematics. According to Chowdhury, there was no significant difference presented by the performance between the girls and boys in the mathematics test due to the use of a constructivist approach of learning (2016). The girls had a mean of 29.2 while the boys had a mean of 30.3; hence there was no a big difference between the means (Chowdhury, 2016). I agree with the article since the mean difference between the two means is 1.1, which is a lower value, and therefore, the significant difference is minimal when the constructivist approach is used between the two genders.

Conclusion

In my opinion, the use of the constructivist approach has a significant impact and influence on the achievement and performance of the learners in mathematics, and I support how these effects have been portrayed in the articles. Learners whose learning environment is in a constructivist approach have had an improvement in the application and understanding abilities, unlike in other abilities such as skill and knowledge in mathematics achievement. The recommendations for this research include the exploration of the impact of the use of constructivist approach through a thorough and profound research in a significant number of a representative sample whereby the participants have different grades. The research should also be conducted using higher classes in the future. The Mathematics Achievement Test used should also incorporate many questions for future study. Finally, the opinion of various experts should be considered in concluding the results of the study. My judgment regarding this study is reasonable and fair since I made my judgment using the consideration from the four articles. I based my argument and opinion on the results and findings of the four articles that supported the positive effects of the use of a constructivist approach on the achievement and performance of learners in mathematics. My judgment is, therefore, valid and reliable.