The Effect of the Rectangular Module on the Remedial Teaching of Figure Area

• Main Authors: Chen, Chao-Chi, 陳昭吉
• Other Authors: Chen, Ming-Jang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/75575552963172757990

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 理學院科技與數位學習學程 === 101 === Research done by John Sweller and his colleagues proved that knowledge was stored in long-term memory in the form of schema and that the numbers of long-term memory schema determined learning effectiveness. When students were lacking in schema, how to help them reduce cognitive load and increase their schema played a key role in the learning process. This study is intended to investigate the effect of rectangular module on the remedial teaching. The participants were 253 seven-graders recruited from 8 average classes in a high school in Taichung City in Taiwan. After the pre-test, low achievers received pull-out remedial teaching of rectangular figure area. While the experimental group were instructed under the rectangular module, the control group were instructed under the cut-and-assemble module. Both groups were under guided instruction with the learning materials presented step by step in an attempt to explore students’ learning effectiveness and the effect of cognitive load on it. Under the quasi-experimental design, the researcher conducted interviews with some of the participants from the experimental group in order to understand whether their concept of figure area were truly changed. As for the learning effectiveness in post-test and delayed post-test, in addition to analysis of participants’ total scores, their scores regarding concepts of triangle, parallelogram, and trapezoid were also analyzed. The results of the study showed that, in the post-test, both the participants’ total scores and their scores of the concepts regarding three figures were of significant difference. However, in the delayed post-test, all scores were of significant difference except their scores of the trapezoid concept. Furthermore, participants’ cognitive load was analyzed through their mental efforts involved in class measured by the cognitive load measurement. The results showed that there was no significant difference between participants’ cognitive loads in both groups. Finally, in terms of instructional efficiency and instructional involvement score, participants in the experimental group were described as learners of high involvement and high instructional efficiency learning style, while those from the control group were classified as learners of low involvement and low instructional efficiency learning style. The researcher thus suggested that teachers could help students learn figure area more effectively if they could adopt the rectangular module strategy, made up of the two procedures, first overlapping one side of a rectangle with either side of a parallelogram and then drawing the other side of the rectangle, which was equaled to the height of the figure.