The Effects That a Flipped Classroom has on Engagement and Academic Performance for High School Mathematics Students

Flipped classrooms continue to spark educator’s attention and curiosity as an alternative to the traditional teaching and engagement in a classroom, especially during the time of a global pandemic. New, innovative technology has allowed for educators to be able to evolve their classrooms into new learning environments. Research into how flipped classrooms can impact mathematics classrooms and how students engage and perform differently than in a traditional mathematics classroom was expanded on in this study to determine what benefits there could be for students and how effective the teaching model can be in a class where students often struggle. As stated by Kwan Lo (2017), “changing the norms of a mathematics classroom is difficult, but if more studies are conducted in different school and social contexts, the research can support the work” (p.626). The purpose of the quantitative study was to find out if students prefer and perform better in a mathematics classroom that is more student-led than teacher-led in respects to how students learn, by exploring how a flipped classroom could engage them in this process. The underlying question that the research investigated in the study was, “how does the flipped classroom model affect the academic performance and engagement of secondary mathematics students?” There is a need to better understand on how this learning environment both affects students engagement and how it impacts students’ performance in a mathematics class. The population of study was secondary students. The study provided understanding of how students could increase responsibility of their own learning at an earlier age than they are used to, while interacting more with their peers and the content in the classroom setting. A causal-comparative approach was used to analyze survey data from a unit in a geometry classroom on how students’ felt their engagement and performance in a flipped mathematics classroom was compared to that in a traditional mathematics classroom