The Effect of Behavioral Objectives Exposition to First Intermediate Female Students on their Achievement and Inclination towards Mathematics

Abstract

The paper aims at identifying the effect of behavioral objectives exposition to first intermediate female students on their achievement and inclination towards Mathematics. The sample of the study comprises 59 female students who are selected from one of the schools in Baqubah, namely, Alamal High School, in the second semester of the academic year 2013-2014. They are distributed randomly into an experimental group that is given knowledge of the behavioral objectives prior to indulge teaching them, and a controlling group that is of no knowledge of the behavioral objectives. The terms and open sentences units are chosen to be the study topics. A group of behavioral objectives are attached to these units. The two groups are taught for a month, three lessons per week. The researcher then set the appropriate lesson plans, exposed some of them to a group of referees and experts in the field. Moreover, he formulated an achievement test of 20 items aimed at gauging the overall achievement of the students in both groups, Bloom's levels of remembrance, comprehension and application. The test is also exposed to a number of referees and experts to check its reliability. The validity of the test if found by means of the split-half method. Furthermore, correction and difficulty coefficients and item distinguishing power are found and applied on the experimental and controlling groups after ending up teaching. As for the inclination towards math, the researcher has selected Aiken Scale that is consisting of 20 items, and next he conducted pre and post tests for the two groups. When scoring, data analysis of the pre and post tests and the scale are done, the researcher figured out that there are statistically significant variations in the level of (0.05) between the marks average of the two groups on the total achievement and Bloom's levels of remembrance and comprehension in favor of the experimental group which are attributed to the exposition of behavioral objectives prior to teaching, while there are no statistically significant variations in the application level. Moreover, there are statistically significant variations in the level of (0.05) between the experimental group students' responses towards the inclination scale and the controlling group the process of teaching which are attributed to the exposition of behavioral objectives prior to teaching,. The researcher recommended teachers to expose the behavioral objectives to the students before getting started in the teaching of any topic in