Effects of Teacher- Directed and Self-Paced Instructional Strategies on Achievement in Trigonometry among Secondary School Students in Ekiti State

This study was designed to determine the efficacies of teacher-directed and self-paced instructional strategies on students’ achievement in trigonometry. Three research questions were posed and three hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance.  Pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental design was employed for the study. The Population of the study comprising of 3680 SS II students from coeducational public secondary schools in Ekiti State was used for the study. A Sample size of 177 consisting of ninety-nine (99) males and seventy-eight (78) females was used for the study. Purposive sampling technique was used for the study. Trigonometry Achievement Test (TAT) was used as instruments for data collected for the study. The two instruments were subjected to face validation. The trial testing was carried out using 40 respondents and the reliability coefficient of 0.86 was obtained for TAT using K-R20.  Data were collected and analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions and ANCOVA was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings also showed that mean achievement scores of students taught using teacher-directed instructional strategy have higher than those taught with self-paced instructional strategy in trigonometry.  There was no significant influence of gender on students’ achievement in trigonometry. There was no significant interaction effect of instructional strategies and gender on Students’ achievement in trigonometry. Based on the findings, it was recommended that mathematics teachers should adopt teacher-directed and self-paced instructional strategies to enhance students’ achievement in mathematics.