In a learning process, the teacher who organizes the teaching and the learners who will eventually display the effectiveness of the teacher’s effort by their performance are very important. If the performance of students that were taught by a teacher is encouraging, the teacher is happy and there will be willingness to put more efforts. If otherwise, the teacher is depressed and this promote negative attitude towards the subject by both the teacher and the learner. The ability to convey what the teacher knows to the learners may be hindered if non-appropriate teaching strategy is employed. This was supported by Ganyaupfu [1] that says to facilitate the process of knowledge transmission, teachers should apply appropriate teaching strategies that best suit specific objectives and will elicit the expected learning outcomes. The success of teaching is always attributed to the effectiveness of the teacher in selecting appropriate teaching strategy. Many researchers have worked on teaching strategies as they believed that when appropriate teaching strategy is used by a teacher, students will perform better [2,3], yet, research on teaching and learning strategies for mathematics continues since the best is yet to be discovered. The quest for better performance of students in mathematics will continue until analysis of students’ performance gives one hundred percent pass consistently in both internal and external examinations. This is so because mathematics is a subject of importance that cuts across every human endeavor. Learners should have the understanding of every concept taught so that the application to day-to-day activities will be made possible. This was supported by Tebabal and Kahssay [4], with the opinion that primary purpose of teaching at any level of education is to bring a fundamental change in the learner, since education can only be described as functional when it is functioning. 

Learners should be able to perform mathematical operations involved in a learned concept and also be able to apply mathematical knowledge in solving problems in a variety of situations. To achieve this, the teacher should purposively adopt a teaching strategy that will not be on the platform of giving what he knows but what the learners give and demonstrate as outputs. This form the basis for this research, to consider the effect that integrated teaching approach or strategy will have on learners’ performance and attitude towards mathematics.

Integration is a process of merging or combining two or more activities to become one entity in the course of a particular event. Integrated teaching approach is the incorporation of two or more teaching strategies to become an indistinguishable teaching approach in a particular lesson. In a mathematics class, a particular teaching strategy may not be satisfying to every learner, when two strategies are combined; there is possibility of having better learning process. Hence, the researcher considered the effect of combining collaborative and task-oriented strategies in the teaching and learning of mathematics.

Conceptof Collaborative Strategy

Strategy is a principle of instruction; it is a systematic and logical way of impacting knowledge into learners [5]. It is the way through which the teacher shares information with the learners in order to improve their knowledge. According to Kolawole and Popoola [6], one of the qualities of a good teaching is strategy-ology. This explained the fact that the teacher must strategize how the lesson will be taught starting from the preparation of the lesson plan, then the arrangement of the learning environment before the classroom activities.

It has been observed that for a learner to be successful he is expected to be; knowledgeable, self-determined, strategic and empathetic thinkers. All these are needful in a class where collaboration will be employed by the learners. Researchers indicated that successful learning also involves an interaction of the learners, materials, the teacher and the context. The concept of Collaborative learning; the grouping and the pairing of learners for the purpose of achieving a learning goal has been widely researched and advocated. For instance, [7] describes collaborative learning as an instructional strategy in which learners at various performance levels work together for one another’s learning as well as their own benefits. This revealed the fact that there is no classic in a collaborative learning environment. There is no superiority complex. 

Collaborative strategy is instructional context in which peers work together on a learning task, with the goal of all participants benefiting from the interaction

Collaboration is a philosophy of interaction and personal lifestyle where individuals are responsible for their actions, including learning and respect the abilities and contributions of their peers [8]. If a student feels alienated and disengaged from the learning system in school, his or her potential fundamental skills mastery and the development of effective learning skills is likely to be reduced. In grouping learners, the facilitator considers a variety of perspectives including social-psychological, socio-cultural, cognitive-developmental and cognitive-elaboration approaches. The mind of the learners in accommodating each other which has to do with emotional balance of the learners should be taking into consideration. Cultural background of each learner should be given attention by the teacher to avoid discrimination. Pace at which each student learnt is worth of consideration during grouping that is talking about low learners and fast learners. 

The interdependence among group members is the underlying mechanism for effective cooperation. Interdependence is created by using group rewards or by encouraging social cohesion and a norm of caring and helpfulness. Collaborative learning is a relationship among learners that requires positive interdependence, individual accountability, interpersonal skills, face-to-face promotive interaction and processing. Effective collaboration is essential to become a successful learner. Through dialogue and examining different perspectives, students become knowledgeable, strategic, self- determined and empathetic. In a collaborative class, problems are solved more than an individual can do. Features of any collaborative class can be considered in four ways as; sharing knowledge among teachers and students, sharing authority among teachers and students, teacher as mediator and heterogeneous grouping of students. New ideas generated as a result of group work would be share among the whole class. Both the teacher as a facilitator and the leaners would benefit from such idea. This differentiates collaborative strategy from others such as competitive or individualistic in which individual learner wait only for the knowledge of the teacher. 

Sharing authority involves giving a leaner the chance of standing as the leader of a group, either per lesson, per week or per topic. This creates in each learner the sense of responsibility and self-esteem as each learner is engaged meaningfully. The teacher as a facilitator does the grouping with consideration to individual differences, this will make him ha an heterogeneous grouping. Students termed unsuccessful in the traditional class learn better from students that are bright and the righter ones also learn from the weak.

Concept of Task-Oriented Strategy

Task-oriented strategy is a strategy of teaching where teacher gives problems/tasks to students in stages and also allows the learners to generate problems and solve them. This strategy provides opportunities for learners to represent their own creative ideas, communicate with their peers and transfer knowledge Mathematically. In the class of task-oriented strategy, each learner work at his pace. As he finishes one level of task, he proceeds to the next level without waiting for any mate unlike other strategies where a student finishes before other classmates and be making noise because he is limited to just the few questions written by the teacher to be done once by the learners. When learners are given tasks in stages, individual’s ability level is discovered. This provides the teacher with insight on how to help the slow learners and the fast learners are not drawn back. Opportunity is given for a learner to generate his own question and solve it using the recommended material. It limits the idea of teacher-oriented instruction strategy where the transfer of “teacher’s knowledge” to students is the order. 

Task-oriented strategy occurs whenever the student is not provided with an exact answer but rather the materials in order to find the answer themselves. Task-oriented strategy gives students the opportunity to work relatively autonomously over extended periods of time; and culminate in realistic products or presentations. It takes place in a situation where the learner draws on his own experience and prior knowledge and is a strategy of instruction through which students interact with their environment by exploring and manipulating objects, wrestling with questions and controversies, or performing experiments (Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia).

Mathematics is a subject that teaches how people think. “Teaching to think” here could be explained to be helping learners to gain their own ideas rather than mere imparted information from the Mathematics teacher. It also helps students to use their own discoveries in solving some other problems as goal of education could be opined to be helping students to learn in ways that enable them to use what they have learned to solve problems in new situations. In short, task-oriented strategy is fundamental to education because educators are interested in improving students' ability to solve problems. 

Marzano [9] described task-oriented strategy as a process that involves preparing the learner for the discovery learning task by providing the necessary knowledge needed to successfully complete said task. In this approach, the teacher not only provides the necessary knowledge required to complete the task, but also provides assistance during the task. This preparation of the learner and assistance may require some direct instruction. For example, before asking students to compare quadrilaterals, the teacher must have led the students on characteristics of each quadrilateral. 

Another aspect of enhanced discovery learning is allowing the learner to generate ideas about a topic along the way and then having students explain their thinking [9]. A teacher who asks the students to generate their own questions or problems and solve them must have led the learners through some examples that on how to solve similar problems. "A student might come up to the front of the room to work through the first problem, sharing his or her thinking out loud. The teacher might question students and help them formulate their thinking into general guidelines for estimation, such as "start by estimating the sum of the highest place-value numbers. As others come to the front of the room to work their way through problems out loud, students can generate and test more rules [9]. 

Task-oriented is related to other terms such as thinking, reasoning, decision making, critical thinking and creative thinking. Thus, thinking is a broader term that includes Task-oriented as a subset of thinking. Reasoning, decision making, critical thinking and creative thinking are subsets of task-oriented, that is, kinds of finding solutions to tasks. Reasoning refers to problem solving with a specific task in which the goal is to draw a conclusion from premises using logical rules based on deduction or induction. For example, if students know that all four-sided figures are quadrilaterals and that all squares have four sides, then by using deduction, they will know that a square is four sided. 

John [10] devised a Task-oriented course for high-school seniors enrolled in an Illinois school for students talented in Mathematics and science. In each semester that the course was given, students were presented with two "ill-structured" tasks along with raw data relevant to the problem. Students worked autonomously to define and seek a solution to the problem posed for them, investigating leads, asking for additional information, analysing data, etc. Results from this study focused on performance on task-oriented secondary-level settings and attitude of the students towards Mathematics after the whole exercise. It was discovered that students that were subjected to task-oriented strategy outperformed their counterparts that were thought conventionally both in performance and in change of attitude towards Mathematics.

Workman [11] described the implementation of task-oriented learning by science and language arts teams in an elementary school as having tremendous achievement recorded after the use of the strategy in teaching. This could be as a result of students working on open-ended tasks and in heterogeneous groups. This will enable them to have the opportunity of working on their own and to exercise a great deal of choice in doing their Mathematics lessons. Workman administered questionnaires after adopting task-oriented strategy. The results computed revealed that students attitude towards Mathematics positively increased. It was observed that when students working individually, they feel empowered, when they use effective work habits and apply critical thinking to solve problems by finding or creating solutions in relevant projects. In this productive work, students learn how to strengthen their work habits; their critical thinking skills; and their productivity. Throughout this process, students learn new knowledge, skills and positive attitudes.

Statement of the Problem

Observations from reviewed literature and the WASC statistical data have shown the dwindling and unsatisfying performance of students in mathematics both in internal and external examinations. This is a persistence problem that calls for attention considering the position of mathematics as the bedrock of national development of any nation. A large percentage of learners are depressed when they compared their efforts in studying mathematics with that of other subjects and juxtaposed their results. This has led to negative attitude being developed and passed to the younger generations. There is the need to check the source of the problem and deduce the way out. Observation by researchers showed that among other reasons for recurring less performance in mathematics is the less productive strategies employ by mathematics teachers. Sticking to one teaching strategy may not be appropriate for every topic and concept, hence is the need to consider the possibility and effectiveness of integrated teaching strategies in a mathematics class interaction.

Purpose of the Study

This study mainly investigated the effects of Integrated Teaching Approach (ITA) as a catalyst for better performance in mathematics. The specific aim of the study was to investigate the possibility and the effect of combining strategies in a mathematics class interaction.

Hypotheses:

• There will be no significant difference between the performance mean scores of students in the Experimental and Control groups

• There will be no significant difference between the attitudinal mean scores of students in the Experimental and Control groups

This study adopted quasi-experimental of pre-test, post-test, control group design. Effects of the independent variable on the dependent variables were examined. Students’ performance and attitude were established by pre-tests that were conducted on both the experimental and the control groups to ascertain homogeneity. Experimental group was exposed to treatment, using integrated teaching approach while the control group was exposed to conventional strategy of teaching. Post-tests administered after the treatment were used to measure improvement on performance and change in attitude in the two groups.

The population for this study consisted of all the Senior Secondary School Class two students, in all the public secondary schools in Ekiti State while the sample for the study consisted of 160 Senior Secondary School class two (SSSII) students.

Multistage sampling procedure was adopted in selecting the samples Exact number of students missing. Simple random sampling technique was adopted in selecting a Local Government Area (LGA) out of each Senatorial District in Ekiti State to make three LGAs that were used for the study. Two schools were purposively selected from the three selected schools for experimental while the third school was used for control group. Two self-developed instruments were used to collect data, they are (i) Mathematics performance Test (MPT) and (ii) Students’ Attitude Towards Mathematics Questionnaire (SATMQ). MPT was the test item used to determine the selected students’ performance in Mathematics before and after treatment. Mathematics Performance Test (MPT) contains two sections: A and B. Section A solicited for demographic variables of the learner while, section B contained 40 multiple choice objective questions. The instruments used for pre-test and post-test were subjected to intensive screening by consortium of experts; season mathematics teachers that currently set and mark WASC questions in mathematics and a scholar in the field of Tests and Measurement. The instruments were certified valid before usage. 

Pre-tests used to establish the homogeneity of the groups were administered before treatment. Then, four selected topics from Mathematics curriculum were taught for four weeks in both groups. The combination of teaching strategies (Collaborative and Task-oriented) was used to teach students in experimental group while conventional strategy was used in teaching the control group. Hypotheses were tested and analysed using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). Hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significant.

Testing of Hypotheses and Discussion of Findings are presented thus:

Hypothesis 1:  There is no significant difference between the performance mean scores of students exposed to ITA and those in Control group

In testing the hypothesis, performance mean scores of students exposed to integrated teaching strategy and those in Control group were computed and subsequently compared for statistically significance Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) at 0.05 level. The result is presented in Table 1.

Table 1 shows that there is significant difference between the performance mean scores of students exposed to integrated teaching approach and those in Control group (F=369.746). The null hypothesis is rejected. In order to determine the effect of treatment on the adjusted mean scores of students, Multiple Classification Analysis (MCA) was used as presented in Table 2.

Table 1: ANCOVA of students’ performance in Mathematics by treatment

*p<0.05

Table 2: Multiple Classification Analysis (MCA) showing students’ performance in Mathematics by treatment

Table 3: ANCOVA showing students’ attitude in integrated teaching approach and Control groups

*p<0.05

Table 4: Multiple Classification Analysis (MCA) of students’ attitude Mathematics by treatment

Table 2 shows that students exposed to integrated teaching strategy had an adjusted mean score of 35.02(26.94+8.08) while those in Control group had an adjusted mean score of 18.88 (26.94+(-8.06). It implies that ITA constitutes a potent instructional strategy for improving students’ performance in Mathematics:

Hypothesis 2: There is no significant difference between the attitude mean scores of students exposed to integrated teaching approach and those in Control group

Mean scores of students in integrated teaching approach and those in Control group on attitude were obtained and subsequently compared for statistical significance using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) at 0.05 level. The result is presented in Table 3.

Table 3 shows that there is significant difference between the attitude mean scores of students exposed to integrated teaching opproach and those in Control group(F=51.576). The null hypothesis is rejected. The result of Multiple Classification Analysis (MCA) is presented in Table 4.

Table 4 shows that students exposed to integrated teaching approach had the higher adjusted mean score of 110.90 (101.06+9.84) than those not exposed with an adjusted mean score of 90.19 (101.06+(-9.85). This implies that the use of integrated teaching approach improves students’ attitude towards Mathematics.

This study examined ‘exploring the integrated teaching approach: a catalyst for better performance in mathematics’. The findings of this study showed that performance and attitude of the students towards Mathematics were improved upon their exposure to treatment. The findings further showed the possibility of using more than only one teaching strategy in a mathematics class. It also reveals the effectiveness of integrating two strategies (collaborative and task-oriented) on the increase in the performance of students in Mathematics at the secondary school level. This established the effect of peer study in Mathematics. Students’ participation does not only enhance their interest but also promote positive interactive pattern among them. This invariably brings about positive improvement in learners’ performance in Mathematics. This is buttressed by Magen-Nagar [12] that described collaborative as an instructional strategy in which peers work together on a learning task with the goal of all participants benefiting from the interaction. Chan and Yuen [13], in their research work titled “The effects of collaborative learning on students’ attitude and achievement in Mathematics” also buttressed the fact that collaborative strategy influenced students’ performance positively. The results of this research revealed the positive change in the attitude of students exposed to collaborative and task-oriented strategies combined which was the result of individual effort in generating and solving problems while interacting with other members of the class.

Based on the findings, it was concluded that integrated teaching strategy is effective for the teaching of Mathematics [14]. It was also concluded that the use ITA changed attitude of students towards Mathematics. Integrated teaching strategy encouraged sharing of ideas among learners fostered cordiality and friendliness in the class and this made lesson interested for the students. Students were able to think critically and brought out new ideas. The study serves as window to teachers in selecting meaningful, relevant and result oriented instructional strategy in the teaching and learning of Mathematics. It shows to learners, the importance of working in collaboration. Above all, this pedagogical paradigm is capable of paving way for inclusive education, where no one is side-tracked as a result of colour, ethnicity, language, gender or religion. 

Recommendations

Based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations were made:

• Mathematics students should be given orientation concerning the importance of interaction within learners

• Students should be allowed to generate and solve problems on their own

Teachers of Mathematics should adopt integrated teaching strategy in the teaching and learning of mathematics.

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