Abstract

Adeleke M. A

The paper examined the possibility of finding out if improvements in students’ problem solving perfor-mance in simultaneous linear equation will be recorded with the use of procedural and conceptual learning strategies and in addition to find out which of the strategies will be more effective. The study adopted a pretest, post test control group design. A total of 166 science students drawn from four schools in four local government Areas in Osun state of south-western Nigeria were involved in the study. The students were in Senior Secondary Class Two. These students were assigned to four groups of Conceptual Learning Strategy (CLS), Procedural Learning Strategy (PLS) and Conventional Method (CM) while the fourth group was not taught at all. The first two groups were the experimental groups and the control groups were the last two groups. Treatment was administered for a period of eight weeks. A mathematical achievement test was used as pretest and posttest after validation and was found to have reliability coefficient of 0.76 and item difficulty level ranging between 0.42 and 0.46. Three mathematics teachers who were university graduates were engaged to administer the treatment. The study recorded a significant difference between the problem-solving performance of students in the CLS group and those in the CM group (X1=30.71, X2 = 15.66, df =78, t = 16.56, p<0.05).Significant difference in performance was also recorded between PLS group and CM group (X1 = 24.07, X2 = 15.66, df =80, t = 10.95, p<0.05). Likewise performance of students in CLS group and those in PLS group differed significantly (X1=30.71, X2 = 24.07, df = 84, t = 7.98, p< 0.05). The study therefore concluded that both CLS and PLS were effective in enhancing students problem-solving performance and that conceptual learning strategy was more effective