Effects of Mastery Learning Approach on Performance in Geometry among Senior Secondary School Students in Northwest Zone, Nigeria

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of mastery learning approach on performance in geometry among senior secondary school students. Two research questions and two hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The study adopted Quasi-Experimental design. The population of the study comprised of senior secondary school one (SSI) students in the Northwestern states of Nigeria, and the distribution of the population was made up of male and female students from different backgrounds, cultures and location. Simple random technique through balloting was used in the selection of three states while purposive sampling techniques was employed in the selection of six schools; two from each state, three schools were selected from both state owned and private schools; two all-boys schools, two all-girls schools and two mixed schools. The sample size of 369 (201 males and 168 females) was used for the study. Geometry Performance Test (GPT) consisting of 20 standardized multiple choice test items adapted from West Africa Examination Council’s past mathematics questions was used as the instrument for the study. Experimental groups were taught using mastering learning approach while the control groups taught with lecture method. The experiment lasted for four weeks. Descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation were used to present research questions while t-test for independent samples was used for testing of research hypotheses at P≤0.05 level of significance. Results revealed that, the experimental group attained significantly higher achievement scores as compared to control group. On the issue of gender, the result shown that, mastery learning approach is gender friendly, since there is no significant difference between the performance of male and female subjects of the experimental group. It is recommended that, mastery learning approach should be adopted by mathematics teachers in teaching geometry and other perceived difficult topics in mathematics