The effects of using manipulatives in teaching mathematics to enhance learning outcome of grade 5 Bhutanese students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find out the effects of manipulatives on the learning outcome of grade 5 Bhutanese students in mathematics and to examine students’ learning contentment after using manipulatives in teaching and learning mathematics. The research was a quantitative research with a two-group pretest-posttest design. The study group consisted of 78 grade 5 students (39 in experimental group and 39 in control group) studying in one of the primary schools in the Southern District of Bhutan. The study was carried out for four weeks. A cluster random sampling method was adopted to select two sections of grade 5, one as the control group and the other as the experimental group. The experimental group was treated with manipulative materials while the control group was taught using the traditional method. The data was collected from the learning outcome test and learning contentment questionnaire. Both groups were administered with the same pretest and posttest prepared from the chapter ‘Fraction’ of grade 5. The learning contentment questionnaire was administered to the experimental group at the end of the treatment to examine the level of learning contentment of the students after using manipulatives. The data collected were analyzed and interpreted using inferential statistics t-test with p<0.05 level of significance, mean, and standard deviation. The findings of the study revealed that using manipulatives in mathematics enhanced the learning outcome of grade 5 students as the posttest mean score of experimental group was significantly higher than that of the control group with 2-tailed significant value of 0.00. It was also found that students in the experimental group exhibited high level of learning contentment when manipulatives were incorporated in teaching and learning mathematics. Thus, the findings recommend the teachers to use manipulative materials in teaching mathematics