EFFECT OF ETHNOMATHEMATICS-BASED TEACHING APPROACH ON GRADE 3 LEARNERS' ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN NUMERACY CONCEPTS: A CASE STUDY IN THE ZAMBEZI REGION, NAMIBIA

The main purpose of this study was to explore the effect of ethnomathematics-based teaching approach on Grade 3 learners’ performance in numeracy concepts. Employing a quasi-experimental design, stratified random sampling was used to select 40 Grade 3 learners from one Junior Primary school for the experiment. The learners were divided into two groups: experimental and control, each consisting of 20 learners. The experimental group was taught using ethnomathematics-based teaching approach while the control group was taught using the conventional lecture method. Both groups were given common pre- and post-tests in numeracy concepts to assess their entry knowledge and effect of the treatment respectively. The following null hypothesis was tested: H0: There is no significant difference between the performances of Grade 3 learners taught using the ethnomathematics-based teaching approach and the lecture method respectively. The study revealed that the experimental group recorded approximate mean scores of 54% in the pre-test and 79% in the post-test, while the control group recorded 46% and 50% in the pre- and post-tests respectively. The result of the t-test analysis between paired sample means of the experimental and control groups’ post-tests was statistically significant (p < 0.05). This suggests that the ethnomathematics-based teaching approach improved the Grade 3 learners’ performance in numeracy concepts.