EFFECT OF POLYA’S PROBLEM-SOLVING STRATEGY ON SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE IN ALGEBRAIC WORD PROBLEM IN KATSINA METROPOLIS, KATSINA STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of polya’s problem-solving strategy on senior secondary school students’ performance in Algebraic word problem. It is a quasi-experimental design of non-equivalent control. Two (2) research hypotheses were posed and tested in the study. Four (4) schools were purposively sampled with 168 SS 1 students out of 3850 SS1 Students within Katsina Metropolis. The experimental group was exposed to Polya’s Problem solving strategy (PPSS) while the control group was exposed to traditional method. Problem solving performance test (PSPT,) was adapted from past WAEC Question papers by the researcher with reliability co-efficient of 0. 73 using test-retest method. The data were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) at 0.05 level of significance. The null hypotheses I was rejected since P_value = 0.000 and null hypothesis 2 was accepted since Pvalue =0.126. it was concluded that students’ exposed to problem solving strategy performed better than those exposed to traditional method and the performance of boys and girls taught using problem solving method had a very slight difference in favor of boys. It was recommended amongst others that teacher’s adopt problem solving teaching method in teaching mathematics mostly algebraic-word problems.