European Journal of Scientific Research - EuroJournals

Effect of Mathematical Games on Nigerian Students’ Performance in Mathematics in
Secondary Schools in Port Harcourt Metropolis 262
high level source of amusement inherent in games. Also most students are often willing to play games
in their mathematics classes (Higgins, 1973) This finding also supported Azuka (2001) who said that
mathematical games do lead to improved learning.
This explained why students in this category were willing to receive any mathematical
information the game contained and hence their better performance. Standard deviation in the schools
revealed that the groups were heterogeneous (individualistic) in their responses.
In research question 4, apart from the government approved private schools where the boys did
better than the girls, the girls performance was better than that of boys in the other schools. Generally
speaking girls had a total mean score of 28.5 while boys had a total mean score of 28.0. This result
disagreed with such researchers as Becker (1991), Forgasz, Leder and Gardner (1999), Osakwe (1990),
Okeke (1997) and so on, who concluded that mathematics is male domain. This finding rather has
shown that gender does not affect mathematics achievement. Girls are just as capable as boys. One can
deduce here that traditional teaching method is less effective.
Considering hypothesis 2, individual students in the control group had an improved
performance. This means that traditional method cannot be totally condemned. This agreed with the
claim that other factors such as parental influence (Lassa, 1976), students attitude (Aiken, 1970),
emotional factors (Henderickson, 1974) and so on, can affect students performance in mathematics.
Not only the teaching method is responsible for students’ achievements. Hypothesis 3 revealed that
from the pretest scores for both groups, the difference that existed between the scores was
insignificant. The mean difference between the 2 groups also indicated that the students in the
experimental group (29) did better than that in the control group (22.7). Games approach in teaching is
superior. This must have been one of the reasons for the popularity of the use of mathematical games
in the western world.
For hypothesis 4, the finding did not corroborate that of a number of researchers such as
Forgasz, Leder and Gardner (1999), and Osakwe (1990), who said that boys do better than girls in
mathematics achievement and participations. With this finding, girls can be encouraged to study
mathematics without gender inferiority complex
Summary of findings
On the aspect of students’ achievement in mathematics test, the major findings of the study revealed
that the students taught with mathematics games performed better than those taught with traditional
method. Mathematics teachers should therefore treat mathematical games as an important valid
teaching and learning strategy.
For the boys and girls in the experimental group, the difference in their performance was not
significant i.e girls were just as capable as boys in mathematics achievement.
From the analyses of the data, it is concluded that the students’ taught with mathematical games
performed better than those taught without mathematical games.