Motivating Bilingual Arab Pre-university Students to Learn Mathematics through Grouping and Advising

  • Yushau, Balarabe (Preparatory Year Mathematics Program, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals) ;
  • Omar, M.H. (Department of Mathematics and Statistics, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals)
  • Received : 2010.07.25
  • Accepted : 2010.12.20
  • Published : 2010.12.31

Abstract

Motivating students to study mathematics is a concern for many mathematics educators. In this paper, we present the outcome of a one semester experiment in which group-work and academic advising were used as teaching strategies in order to improve the motivational level of our students in learning mathematics. Although the students' performance did not show any statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups, qualitative and other quantitative data collected indicate that the participants in the experiment, especially weak students, have in one way or the other benefited from the teaching approaches. Details of the experiment, the findings and their educational implications are presented.

Keywords

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