Abstract

• The main purpose of the present research is to study the effect of participatory teaching methods on students’ achievement in mathematics at the middle school level. This study was conducted with both quantitative and qualitative research methods. For quantitative research, an experimental study was used to study the effect of participatory teaching methods. The experimental design adopted in this study was a true experimental design, namely, posttest only control group design. For this study, (120) Grade Six students were selected from schools such as BEHS (4), Pazundaung and BEHS (1), Latha by simple random sampling method. These students were divided into two groups: control and experimental. Experimental group was treated with participatory teaching methods and control group was taught with formal instruction. After that, a posttest was administered to two groups. Independent samples t-test was used to test whether there was significant difference between these two groups. Examination of the means and t-test at BEHS (4), Pazundaung (t = 9.036, p < .001) and BEHS (1), Latha (t = 17.428, p < .001) indicated that students who were taught by using participatory teaching methods demonstrated significantly better than those who were taught with formal instruction. For qualitative research, students from the experimental group from two selected schools were given a questionnaire. It consists of (15) items five-point Likert-scale. The results showed that students expressed their willingness to learn in participatory teaching methods and they had positive attitude towards participatory teaching methods. Research findings proved that participatory teaching methods have positive contribution to the mathematics teaching at the middle school level.