Bilingual Medium of Instruction: Effects on Students Conceptual Understanding, Problem Solving Performance and Interest in Mathematics

Jasmin C. Tawantawan, Jocelyn P. Aman

Abstract


This study investigates the effects of using bilingual medium of instruction (Meranaw-Filipino) on students’ conceptual understanding, problem solving performance, and interest in mathematics. It employed quasi-experimental design. Participants of the study consisted of two intact classes of Grade 7 students matched based on their Mathematics 7 grades during the second grading period of the school year 2016 – 2017. The researcher constructed three research instruments such as Conceptual Understanding Test (CUT), Problem Solving Performance Test (PSPT), and Mathematics Survey (MIS). Findings revealed an increase of the number of students from the experimental group from low to moderate in terms of their level of conceptual understanding and from interested to very interested level in mathematics. In the aspect of problem solving performance, both groups shows no increase, however there is a significant difference between the control and experimental groups of students’ conceptual understanding, problem solving performance and interest in mathematics before and after intervention in favor of the experimental group. Students’ perceived that they had better comprehension; learned fast, and were more interested in learning mathematics using bilingual medium of instruction in teaching mathematics. This suggests that the use of the bilingual medium of instruction was found to be beneficial in improving students’ conceptual understanding, problem solving performance, and interest in mathematics than using English only as medium of instruction in teaching. Thus, the school administrator should encourage their teachers the use of bilingual as medium of instruction in teaching mathematics.

Keywords


instruction, bilingual, understanding, performance, interest

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References


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