Effects of VH-iSTEM learning strategy on basic secondary school students' degree of acquisition of van hiele levels of thinking in Sokoto State, Nigeria

Abstract

Learning school geometry and development of geometric thinking skills required a careful selection of strategy, that provides collaborative learning behaviors, use of appropriate tasks, and materials. Thus, teaching and learning should be meaningful not just merely transmission and absorption. Hence opportunities should be given for students to experiment and discover learning experience by themselves. This study investigated the effect of instructional strategy (VH-iSTEM) designed to help in solving the problems of learning school geometry and develop students’ geometric thinking skills. The strategy emphasized the learning of geometry based on the connections of the iSTEM (engineering design phase) with the van Hiele phase. A quasi-experimental, design was used in this study with a sample of 89 students divided into two experimental groups of 30 each (VH-iSTEM, and VH); and 29 students in the control group. Additionally, three students were randomly selected from each group for an interview. The qualitative results obtained revealed that the majority of the students at pre-interview were able to achieve complete acquisition of level one of thinking and that, six students achieve low acquisition of level two, with no acquisition of level three among three independent groups. Thus, after the intervention, only students in the VH-iSTEM learning strategy group achieved the complete acquisition of level one to level three of van Hiele levels. Two students achieved a lower acquisition of level three and that one student achieved the high acquisition of level two and level three in the VH group. No students achieved level three in the control group. This demonstrates that VH-iSTEM learning strategy can be applied in classroom instruction to help students achieve a higher level of geometric thinking.