Browsing by Author "Martin, Kevin Shaun"

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    Implementing productive practice in a grade 10 classroom for the development of procedural fluency in quadratic functions: a design-based research study.
    (Universty of the Western Cape, 2025) Martin, Kevin Shaun
    This qualitative study investigated the influence of implementing a teaching strategy to address poor performance in high-stakes examinations. The intervention employed productive practice as a teaching strategy to address procedural fluency, one of the core issues identified by the past decade's National Senior Certificate (NSC) diagnostic reports. This study used design-based research, using the iterative learning cycles, thus modifying and refining the learners' learning experience. The collected data include observational notes and analysis of the learners’ written responses to the designed productive practice activities. This study aimed to investigate the influence of implementing productive practice on developing procedural fluency in quadratic functions. The findings of the study indicate that some learners have cognitive obstacles and misconceptions of the concept of quadratic functions, resulting in the learners not being procedurally fluent in quadratic functions. Additionally, learners also seem to have difficulty remembering the concepts. Therefore, through the regular implementation of spiral revision and deepening mathematical thinking activities, the retention issue and the procedural fluency issue can be addressed. This study highlights the importance of spirally revising to improve retention of mathematical concepts, enhancing the self-explanation abilities and deepening the mathematical thinking of learners through engaging with productive practice activities and providing teachers with knowledge on the designing of activities that will address retention, procedural fluency and the reasoning skills of the learners.