Remedial Math Instruction Intervention: Efficacy of Constructivist Practices on Alternative Students with Disabilities Mathematics Achievement

Abstract

Many students with disabilities attending alternative high schools are not improving their mathematics ability scores. Failure to improve their mathematics ability scores has hampered their potential academic success and career prospects, resulting in many students dropping out of schools without graduating. The purpose of this quantitative study was to evaluate the effect of a 10 week of constructivist and traditional instruction and investigate a possible causal relationship between experimental and control groups pretest and posttest mathematics ability score. The study adopted a quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group design, using within-subjects and between-subject two-way factorial repeated measures ANOVA in SPSS software for data analysis. The participants for the study were 70 students with disabilities attending an urban alternative high school situated in Mideast United States. The results showed students’ mathematics ability mean scores; with the control (M = 30.36, SE 2.69) and the experimental (M = 34.14, SE 2.69) groups respectively for the participants receiving the 10-week intervention, F (1, 68) = 4.37, p < .05. The Wilk Lambda post hoc test revealed that students’ scores were significant p < .05, meaning scores were different for both pretest and posttest. This key finding shows that the constructivist approach did not produce more achievement growth in student’s math score ability than did the traditional approach. Further, it can be concluded that the constructivist approach was not superior to the traditional approach. It is also recommended that educators should not implement constructivist approach for students with disabilities without further studies to ascertain that the approach is superior.