Effectiveness of Origami-based Instructional Model Approach (Obima) on Secondary School Students’ Academic Performance and Interest in Mensuration, Enugu State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of origami-based instructional model approach (OBIMA) on secondary school students’ academic performance and interest in mensuration. The population of the study consisted of 2105 SSS III students in 15 government owned secondary schools in Igbo-Etiti local government area of Enugu State, Nigeria. The study was guided by five research questions and five null hypotheses. The hypotheses were tested at P £ .05 level of significance. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to randomly sample 153 students used for the study. Two instruments were developed by the researcher and used for gathering data. One was Mathematics Achievement Test (MAT) instrument containing 15 essay items and the other was Mathematics Interest Inventory Questionnaire (MIIQ) which contains 9 items. The instruments were face validated by experts and their reliability estimates were determined using split-half method which yielded 0.80 and 0.88 for MAT and MIIQ respectively. The data collected with the instruments were analyzed using mean and standard deviation (S.D) to answer the research questions while independents t-test statistic was used in testing the hypotheses (P £ .05). Findings of the study revealed that origami-based instructional model approach is effective in teaching mathematics, especially in sketching roots of mensuration theories. Gender was found not to be a significant factor of variance in mathematics performance, particularly when origami is used in mathematics instruction, among other issues found in the study. It was recommended to teachers to adapt and adopt origami-based instructional model approach in mathematics instruction since the study has shown that the use of origami in mathematics instruction effectively enhances students’ interest in mathematics learning.