Investigating the impact of inquiry-oriented instructional approach (IO-IA) on teaching and learning of partial differential equations to undergraduate students of UEW

Abstract

The study investigated the impact of inquiry-oriented instructional approach (IO-IA) on the teaching and learning of partial differential equations (PDEs) at the undergraduate level with the purpose of addressing challenges that students face in the learning of PDEs. A purposive sampling technique was used to select four hundred (400) students from the two cohort groups (2016/2017 and 2017/2018 academic year students) of mathematics students. The selected students in each year group were put into two groups: control and experimental. The study employed sequential explanatory design. Observation, test and semi-structured interview were the data collection instruments used during the study. The independent sample t-test for equality of means indicated that there was significant difference between the mean scores of the control and the experimental groups in all the phases in favour of the experimental group. The study revealed that instructional strategies and methods, students’ ability to recall and apply pre-requisite knowledge in solving PDEs, computational ability and availability of ICT tools were the major factors affecting teaching and learning of PDEs. The study recommended the integration of IO-IA by teachers in PDEs. Other recommendations made by the researcher is the integration of ICT into the teaching and learning of PDEs, adaption of measures to help students improve their computational abilities and the inclusion of inquiry-activities in teaching and learning to improve retention among students. The researcher also recommended that institutions should provide ICT tools and software and also adapt small class size for effective integration of IO-IA in teaching and learning process. Key Words: Differential Equations, Elaboration, Engagement, Exploration, Explanation, Evaluation, Epistemology, Ontology, Inquiry-Oriented, Inquiry-Based, Mathematical Modelling, visualization, Instructional Design, Ordinary Differential Equations, Partial Differential Equations, Realistic Mathematics Education.