Effects Of Activity-Based Strategies On Primary School Mathematics Lesson Plan And Delivery Skills Among Pre-Service Teachers In Southwestern Nigeria

ABSTRACT

Activity-based instructional strategies have been identified as being effective in the delivery of rulegoverned

subjects such as Mathematics. Two of these strategies are the Pupil-centred Activitybased

Instructional Strategy (PAIS) and Teacher Demonstration Activity-based Strategy (TDAS).

However, research findings have shown that a large number of primary school mathematics

teachers trained in colleges of education in Nigeria have difficulty in developing lesson plans and

delivering activity-based mathematics lessons. Past studies on activity-based strategies have

focused on the general effectiveness of such strategies but have not sufficiently covered the skills of

planning and delivery of lessons among the pre-service primary teachers. This study, therefore

examined the effects of activity-based strategies on the primary mathematics lesson plan and

delivery skills among pre-service teachers. The moderating effect of teachers’ numerical ability and

gender were also examined.

Pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental research design was adopted for this study. The

participants were 337 pre-service primary Mathematics teachers in three colleges of education in

Southwestern Nigeria. Pupil-centred activity-based, teacher demonstration activity-based and

conventional strategies were assigned to experimental-group I, experimental-group II and control

group respectively. The study lasted 15 weeks for teaching and observation. Pre-Service Teachers

Activity-Based Lesson Plan Scale (r = 0.84); Activity-Based Lesson Utilisation Scale (r = 0.79);

Primary Numerical Ability Test (r = 0.83) and three instructional guides were the research

instruments used. Eleven hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Data were analysed

using Analysis of Covariance, Analysis of Variance and Scheffe’s Post-hoc tests.

There was a significant main effect of treatment on pre-service teachers’ lesson plan skills (F(2,318) =

628.15; p