Asia Pacific Journal of Education, Arts and Sciences, Vol. 4 No.

1, January 2017
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Asia Pacific Journal of
Contextualized and Localized Teaching as a Education, Arts and Sciences
Technique in Teaching Basic Statistics Vol. 4 No. 1, 62-67
January 2017
1
Rodelio M. Garin (MAM) , Rico Reyes (PhD), Gloria F. Domantay and Part II
Julie Rosals P-ISSN 2362-8022
Pangasinan State University, Bayambang, Pangasinan, Philippines E-ISSN 2362-8030
[email protected] www.apjeas.apjmr.com

Date Received: December 21, 2016; Date Revised: January 29, 2017

Abstract - Problems on students’ diversity with must use authentic materials, and anchor teaching in
diverse needs still persist nowadays. To address this the context of learners’ lives.
problem, the teacher need to be conscious on their According to Mouraz and Leite [2],
socio-cultural background so as to benefits everyone contextualization is a prerequisite in addressing the
in the classroom. This study determined the effect of content and organization of activities to be undertaken
teaching statistics using contextualized and localized in the classroom. Students' engagement in their
(indigenized) information on the performance of schoolwork increases significantly when they are
students. The study was carried out using pretest- taught, why they are learning the concepts and how
posttest control group single blind experimental those concepts can be used in real-world contexts [3].
research design. Two intact classes were used and this According to Ozele [4], cultural contextualize
was done by random assignment. There are thirty four education motivates students to know more about their
students exposed to contextualized and localized cultural heritage in order to appreciate and understand
teaching (experimental) and thirty students exposed to other cultural heritage.
contextualize but not localized teaching (control). T- The current concern in several countries and
test for independent samples and ANCOVA was enlightens discussions about the importance of
utilized in comparing the pretest and posttest refinement of national cultures as an overall purpose
performances of the two groups. Concerning on the of the curriculum and how this match idea of
result, it was found out that the performance of the qualifying students for life does. Philippine National
experimental group was significantly different to the Educational Testing and Research Center [5] reported
performance of the control group on the empirical that the mean percentage score of high schools in the
probability, but they were not significantly different National Achievement Test (NAT) in mathematics
on the theoretical probability. The finding indicates school year 2011-2012 is 46.37. This result is
that the use of indigenous data in teaching statistics obviously lower than the passing rate of 75.00. This is
along empirical probability is an effective teaching an evidence that our students have been scoring low in
and learning strategy. Additionally, the study mathematics. According to Young, Hodge, Edwards,
recommends developing an authentic, contextualized and Leising [6], one such answer to this problem has
and localized instructional material in statistics been to find a way to motivate students to learn
subject to improve the performance of the students. mathematics by making the mathematics meaningful
Keywords: Teaching strategy, learning, real and to them. Groups such as the National Council of
indigenized data Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM, 2000) and the
National Research Council (2001) have called for the
INTRODUCTION need for placing mathematics in context and adding
This study aimed to determine the effect of “real world” examples in mathematics.
teaching localized data on the performance of the Based on participants’ posts on the discussion
students in Probability. Bringas [1] gives important board, the greatest barriers to implementing the
reminders on contextualization and localization: curriculum were learner-content mismatch, lack of
Localization and contextualization can be done in all relevance in contexts and in content, difficulty in
learning areas; localization maximizes materials, interpreting the lesson plans, attendance patterns and
activities, events, and issues that are readily available time constraints. Despite the numerous barriers,
in the local environment; to contextualize, teachers several aspects of the high-level contextualized
curriculum had positive effects on adult learners and
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 Asia Pacific Journal of Education, Arts and Sciences, Vol. 4 No. 1, January 2017
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instructions. In most cases, these facilitators were core of the educational process, although most of what
strong enough to overcome the barriers listed above people learn occurs outside of school.
[7].
Contextualize teaching is defined operationally in Cognitive-behaviorism theory. The following
different ways. According to Spring [8] contextualize learning theories served as a guide for the researcher.
teaching means to teach in connection with real life One of these theories is the Cognitive-behaviorism
and within the culture of the learners Bird, Livesey & theory. Innovative Learning-Behaviorism, (2013) as
Simon [9]; Mazzeo, Rab, and Alssid as cited by Perin cited in Walker and Moore [13] behaviorism theories
[10] states that contextualize teaching is an define learning as “semi-permanent change in
instructional strategy concentrating on presenting the behavior”. In other words, if the behavior of the
lesson directly on concrete applications in a specific learners substantially changes positively, then learning
context to appeal to the interest of the students. has evidently happened. Innovative Learning-
According to Mazzeo et al., (as cited by Perin, [10]) Cognitivism (2013) states that learning is an “internal
contextualized teaching is a method of presenting the processes”. This entails that learning will be acquired
subject matter in meaningful and relevant context. more if the learners have higher interest to learn. A
Thus, the teachers should use issues, events, activities, cognitive-behaviorism is an interaction between the
and authentic materials related to the learners to meet mind and behavior. The learner will behave
their needs on the subject. According to Marri et al., accordingly if the learner thinks that he/she, his/her
in press; McDermott, [11] some instructors are family, and other human being will be benefited by
hesitant to consider contextualized teaching because what he/she is doing. Every human being is different
they believe that it is beyond their range of in terms of objectives, ambitions, principles and they
responsibilities and/or skills. like. All of these things are based on what is on our
The following discussion presents the theories, thought, feelings and behavior. According to Fritscher
concepts, insights, generalizations, and ideas which [14] if our thoughts, feeling and behavior are satisfied
aided and inspired the researcher to examine the effect this may change our reaction. According to Badura,
of contextualized and localized teaching in Beck, Ellis, Lazaras, Meichenbaum, Pavlov and
Probability. Wolpe [15] cognitive and behavioral approach is an
This paper is anchored on the effect of the important approaches in understanding and
contextualized and localized teaching on the students' determining the human being needs.
performance in Probability. The diagram below shows Motivation theory. Learning theories are
the theories displayed in the form of a diagram as diversified in scope, but relates closely to
covered in established theoretical framework of the contextualize teaching and learning. Another type of
study. learning theory which gives highlight on contextualize
teaching and learning is motivation theory. To
motivate the students the teacher should give an
interesting problem as the basis of instruction [16].
According to Kelemen [17], the reasons that make
the child to come to school, to listen to the teachers
and to learn is divided into two main groups. (1)
Extrinsic motivation-when the student falls into
school discipline without a direct interest in what is
taught, but to receive, directly or indirectly, certain
rewards, especially moral ones. (2) Intrinsic
motivation – where the learning and the acquiring
Figure 1. Learning Theories and concepts knowledge, interest directly the student. Moldovan,
Ignat, Bălas-Timar [18] stated that the center of
Learning. The goal of this work is to determine intrinsic motivation is curiosity, that means the desire
the effect of the local contexts on the students' to know much more. Curiosity becomes permanent
performance. According to Shuell [12] learning is the when it is combined with beliefs about the value of
most important activities of humans. Learning may culture, which facilitates the communication with
happen in school or outside the school. It is at the very others and provides a great wealth of experiences,
sources of satisfaction and equanimity. Stimulating
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 Asia Pacific Journal of Education, Arts and Sciences, Vol. 4 No. 1, January 2017
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children’s curiosity was achieved net enrichment of are not aware that they are the respondents of the
their vocabulary, have developed strategies of thought study. This study used two groups of students, one
and action that can help them to solve the group was exposed to contextualized and localized
experimental tasks proposed [19]. teaching and the other group were exposed
Perin [10] states that the perceived value of contextualized but not localized teaching. The result
contextualized teaching and learning is that this of the pretest and posttest of each group was used to
method can create a commonsense structure with draw conclusions.
which to focus instruction. Decontextualized
instruction may be difficult for students to connect to Respondents of the study
because they do not have an understanding of how the The subjects of the study were the students
material may be useful and meaningful, thereby enrolled in Basic Statistics during the School Year
failing to engage with the material or increase intrinsic 2015-1016. This study used two intact groups of
motivation. To show the importance of Statistics to students enrolled in the Pangasinan State University,
the learners, the teacher should relate the teaching and Bayambang, Pangasinan to measure the effect of
learning process to the local environment. The teacher contextualized and localized teaching on the students’
should create possibilities on how he/she could performance: one group was exposed to
motivate and inspire students, so that retention of the contextualized and localized teaching (experimental
lessons will be lasting. Meaningful learning facilitates group) while the other group was exposed to the
faster acquisition and longer retention than learning by contextualized but not localized teaching (control
rote. group).
Figure 2 shows the two teaching techniques that
were used in this study and the written performance of Instrumentation and Data Collection
the students in Statistics. The topics and objectives were the same in both
This study considered two objectives: groups except the teaching strategy. The topics used
1. The pre-test and post-test performance of the covers two chapters of Basic Statistics (Probability
students exposed to the different approaches, and Normal Distribution). Each group will take an
2. And the significant difference in the pre-test and examination using the test questionnaire constructed
post-test performances of the students across by the researcher. The test questionnaire is composed
group. of fifteen theoretical and empirical problems in
probability. The test questionnaire instrument was trial
– tested to 15 randomly selected BSE second year
math major, students who are not the subjects to
calculate its reliability. Kuder Richardson Formula 20
revealed a reliability coefficient of 0.79 which denotes
that the test has high internal consistency. The result
of the examination of each group was analyzed to
draw conclusion about the effect of the contextualized
and localized teaching on the performance of the
students.
Figure 2. Research Paradigm
Analysis of Data
METHODOLOGY To obtain the validity and reliability of the results
Research Design of the study, appropriate statistical tools were used.
This study used the single – blind experimental The following statistical tools were used in the
method of research, particularly the pretest-posttest study. To determine the level of performance of the
control group design and focused on finding out the students’ mean percentage score will be used. The
effect contextualized and localized teaching on the mean percentage score is the quotient of the raw score
performance of the students in Basic Statistics. and the total number of points times 100%.
According Shuttleworth [20] the investigation may To determine if there is a significant difference
result to experimental flaws (bias) if both or each between the pretest performance of the experimental
group knows that they are belong to the investigation. group and the control group t-test was used. Analysis
The idea is that both experimental and control groups of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to examine if
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 Asia Pacific Journal of Education, Arts and Sciences, Vol. 4 No. 1, January 2017
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there is a significant difference between the posttest It can be gleaned also from table 1 that the
performances of the students exposed to each type of posttest performance (AMPS) of the control group
teaching strategies. (66.22) on the theoretical type of test is higher than
the experimental group (64.22). However, the posttest
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION performance of the experimental group (67.06) on the
This part presents the effectiveness of teaching empirical type of test is higher than the control group
localized (indigenous) data in teaching probability (58.67). Generally, the posttest performance of the
subjects. The students' performance on the different experimental group (65.59) is higher than the control
type of test were determined using mean percentage group (62.44).
score (MPS). The pre-treatment measure used to As reflected also in Table 1, the pupils mean
decide if the two groups are comparable regarding percentage score in the pretest examination is below
their knowledge along the probability subject was 50. There are 93.33% and 97.1% of the respondents in
examined using t-test. The posttest performance was the control group and the experimental group,
done using the Analysis of Covariance procedure. respectively scores below 50 on the theoretical type of
Table 1 revealed that the pre-test performance test. Spell along the empirical type of test, all of the
(Average Mean Percentage Score AMPS) of the pupils in both groups received a percentage score of
experimental group (24.51) on the theoretical type of below 50. Generally, both groups had a very low
test is slightly lower than the control group (24.67). performance (below 50) on both types of test.
Nevertheless, the pre-test performance of the Table 1 also demonstrates that the prevalent mean
experimental group (23.53) on the Empirical type of percentage score on the posttest of both groups in both
exam is slightly higher than the control group (22.67). types of test is 50 – 74. Both groups generally had low
Generally, the pre-test performance of the performance (50 – 74) on both types of test.
experimental group (24.02) is more eminent than the
control group (23.67).

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics of Student Pretest and Postest Performance on the Theoretical and Empirical
Type of Test.
Theoretical Empirical Over-all
Control Experimental Control Experimental Control Experimental
(%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%)
50 Below 93.3 97.1 100.0 100.0 96.7 98.4
Pretest 50-74 6.7 2.9 0.0 0.0 3.3 1.6
N 30 34 30 34 64 64
AMPS 24.67 24.51 22.67 23.53 23.67 24.02
50 Below 3.3 20.6 33.3 23.5 6.7 10.9
Posttest 50-74 70.0 50.0 56.7 41.2 76.7 62.5
75-79 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 3.3 4.7
80-84 13.3 14.7 6.7 11.8 10.0 12.5
85-89 10.0 11.8 3.3 11.8 0.0 1.6
90 and above 3.3 2.9 11.8 3.3 7.8
N 30 34 30 34 64 64
AMPS 66.22 64.12 58.67 67.06 62.44 65.59

Table 2. Comparative Analysis of Student Pretest Performance in Probability Measured Using Theoretical and
Empirical test Questions
Mean Mean Difference Df t-value Sig.
Experimental 3.6765 -.02353 62 -.052 .959
Theoretical
Control 3.7000
Experimental 3.5294 .12941 62 .392 .696
Empirical
Control 3.4000
Experimental 7.2059 .10588 62 .175 .861
Overall
Control 7.1000

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 Asia Pacific Journal of Education, Arts and Sciences, Vol. 4 No. 1, January 2017
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Table 3. Comparative Analysis of Student Performance in Probability Measured Using Theoretical and
Empirical Test Questions with Pre-treatment Measure as a Covariate
Source Sum of Squares Df Mean Square F Sig.
Pretest Theoretical 21.719 1 21.719 4.904 .031
Theoretical test Between Groups 1.511 1 1.511 .341 .561
Performance Within Groups 270.177 61 4.429
Total 6397.000 64
Pretest empirical 7.460 1 7.460 1.281 .262
Empirical test Between Groups 23.848 1 23.848 4.095 .047
Performance Within Groups 355.222 61 5.823
Total 6126.000 64
Pretest over-all 176.364 1 176.364 11.631 .001
Over-all Between Groups 12.031 1 12.031 .793 .377
Performance Within Groups 924.944 61 15.163
Total 24793.000 64

Table 2 revealed that the computed significant FINDINGS

values are greater than the alpha level 0.05 (0.959, The pretest average mean percentage score
0.696, 0.861). The t-test comparison of the Pretest (AMPS) of the students exposed to contextualized and
performance of the both types of test implies that no localized teaching (24.51) is slightly lower than the
significance difference between the experimental and student exposed to contextualized but not localized
control group. This implies that the two groups are teaching (24.67) on the theoretical type of test.
comparable in terms of their pretest performance. However, regarding the empirical type of test the
Table 3 shows the computed F-value and performance of the students expose to contextualized
significant value of the theoretical and the empirical and localized teaching (23.53) is slightly higher than
type of test. The F – value (0.341) corresponds to the the performance of the students expose to
theoretical type of test generates a significance (0.561) contextualized but not localized teaching (22.67).
higher than the alpha level 0.05. With this, it is Moreover, the prevailing mean percentage score of the
apparent that the null hypothesis stating that there is students on the theoretical (96.7%) and empirical type
no significant difference in the posttest performance of test (98.4%) is below 50.
of the students on the theoretical type of test is The posttest performance (AMPS) of the students
rejected. This means that the posttest performance of expose to contextualized and localized teaching
the control group and experimental group significantly (64.12) is lower than the student expose to
the same from each other. contextualized but not localized teaching (66.22) on
Table 3 also shows the F-value (4.905) the theoretical type of test. However, regarding the
corresponds to the empirical type of test generates a empirical type of test the performance of the students
significance (0.47) lower than the alpha level 0.05. exposes to contextualized and localized teaching
With this result, the null hypothesis stated that no (67.06) is higher than the performance of the students
significant difference between the performances exposing to contextualized but not localized teaching
across the type of teaching exposure on the said type (58.67). The prevailing mean percentage score of the
of test is rejected. The experimental group mean students with the theoretical (76.7%) and empirical
percentage score in the posttest was 67.06, and the type of test (62.5) is 50-74.
control group mean percentage score in the posttest The pretest performance of the students is
was 58.67 (Table 1). This signifies that the posttest comparable for the two types of test when they are
performance of the experimental group along grouped according to the said teaching approaches.
empirical type of test is significantly higher than the The posttest performance of the students is the
control group. same on the theoretical type of test when they are
The F – value (0.793) corresponds to the overall grouped according to the said teaching approaches.
performance of each group generates a significant The students exposed to contextualized and
value (0.337) higher than the alpha level 0.05. This localized teaching significantly performed better than
result implies that the overall performance of each students exposed to contextualized and but not
group on the posttest were not significantly different localized teaching on the empirical type of test.
from each other.
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CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION courses beyond mathematics: Combating the need
The pretest and posttest performance of the for post-secondary remediation in mathematics.
students exposed to contextualized and localized [7] Showalter D.A., Wollet C., Reynolds S. (2015).
teaching is higher than the group of students exposed Teaching a high-level contextualized mathematics
curriculum to adult basic learners.
to contextualized and but not localized teaching on the
[8] Spring (2010). Realia and contextualization. Retrived
empirical type of test, but they have a lower on February 4, 2016 from
performance on the theoretical type of test. Generally, http://gaining.educ.msu.edu/resources/node/422.
the group of students exposed to contextualized and [9] Bird, D., Livesey, G., & Simon, P. (2011). The
localized teaching performed better than the group of integration of academic and technical skills in K-12
students exposed to contextualized and but not and community college classrooms: Contextualized
localized teaching. teaching and learning as a key strategy.. Retrieved
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pretests performance on the theoretical type of test [10] Perin, D. (2011). Facilitating student learning through
when they are grouped according to the said teaching contextualization. Community College Research
Center.
strategies. However, in the posttest, concerning the
[11] McDermott, M. (2010). More than writing-to-learn:
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contextualized and localized teaching were performed classroom. The Science Teacher.
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not localized teaching. relationship between theory and practice different
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