There have been perennial concerns on the low academic performance of students among researchers and other education stakeholders. Innovative teaching strategies have, therefore, gained prominence in the field of mathematics education. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of a social constructivist instructional strategy on students’ performance in algebra. The present study is quasi-experimental, and its type is a posttest control group involving 154 secondary school students that are randomly selected across four intact classes. The random selection of students to treatment and control controls is assumed to improve the validity of the results. Two research questions are raised, and two null hypotheses are formulated and tested at level of significance. One research instrument, algebra performance test (APT), was developed, pilot-tested (test-retest reliability coefficient of 0.897), and used to measure students’ performance in both treatment and control groups. The data are analyzed using independent sample t-tests. The findings indicate that there are significant differences in the mean performance scores between experimental (mean = 16.05, SD = 2.74) and control (mean = 11.46, SD = 2.49) groups, t(152) = 10.83, . These findings may be interpreted to be evidence of the effectiveness of the social constructivist instructional strategy in improving performance in algebra better than the conventional teaching method. Also, a significant difference exists between the mean performance scores of males (mean = 17.83, SD = 2.82) and females (mean = 14.72, SD = 1.77) in the experimental group (t(80) = 6.11, ). Thus, the effect of the social constructivist instructional strategy on students’ performance in algebra is gender-sensitive. Based on these findings, some recommendations are made to students, teachers, parents, administrators, and other stakeholders.

中文翻译：

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社会建构主义教学策略对以中学生为代数的代数成绩的影响

一直以来，研究人员和其他教育利益相关者对学生学习成绩低下一直存在担忧。因此，创新的教学策略已在数学教育领域引起了人们的关注。这项研究的目的是调查社会建构主义教学策略对学生代数成绩的影响。本研究是准实验性研究，其类型是一个后测试对照组，涉及154名中学生，他们从四个完整班级中随机选择。假定随机选择学生进行治疗和控制，以提高结果的有效性。提出了两个研究问题，并提出了两个无效假设并在显着性水平上对其进行了检验。开发了一种研究工具，即代数性能测试（APT），经先导测试（重测信度系数为0.897），并用于衡量学生在治疗组和对照组中的表现。使用独立的样本t检验分析数据。研究结果表明，实验组（平均值= 16.05，SD = 2.74）和对照组（平均值= 11.46，SD = 2.49）之间的平均绩效得分存在显着差异，t（152）= 10.83，。这些发现可以解释为社会建构主义教学策略比传统教学方法更好地提高代数成绩的有效性的证据。此外，在实验组中，男性（平均= 17.83，SD = 2.82）和女性（平均= 14.72，SD = 1.77）之间的平均表现得分之间存在显着差异（t（80）= 6.11，）。从而，社会建构主义教学策略对学生代数成绩的影响是性别敏感的。基于这些发现，向学生，老师，父母，管理者和其他利益相关者提出了一些建议。