Effectiveness of a Visual-Spatial Intelligence Teaching Courseware on the Achievement of Underachieving Students in Equivalent Fractions (53 - 63)

Abstract

This research was conducted to test the effectiveness of visual-spatial intelligence teaching courseware to teach “equivalent fraction” topic for Form 1 underachieving students. This courseware uses visual-spatial intelligence which is one of the eight multiple intelligences in multiple intelligence theory by Howard Gardner. The design of this research was pretested and posttested on nonequivalent groups design. The sample involved 57 students that comprised 29 for the treatment group and 28 for the control group. This research also tested whether the use of the courseware could increase visual-spatial intelligence in the Multiple Intelligence (MI) test. Students’ perspective towards the courseware in terms of courseware objectives, courseware content, interface design, motivation, and assistance in learning the topic was acquired using questionnaire. ANCOVA test showed that there was a significant effect of the visual-spatial teaching courseware on learning performance compared to Ministry of Education (MOE) courseware after controlling for the effect of pretest (non-homogenous groups). There was a significant increase in the Visual-Spatial Intelligence score in the Multiple Intelligence test from pretest to posttest. Based on the findings, teachers are recommended to use visual representations (visualspatial intelligence) as much as possible and use less words (linguistic and mathematical intelligence). A teacher should also use one or a few intelligences in each lesson to increase reading in that particular intelligence in the MI test.