EFFECT OF CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH ON THE ACHIEVEMENT OF ELEMENTARY STUDENTS’ IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

The present study investigated the effect of constructivist approach on the achievement of elementary students in the English language. A quasi-experimental design was used in the study. Participants for this study were drawn via purposive sampling from an intact population of class VI students and were divided into an experimental group (N = 29) and a control group (N =29). An achievement test, which served as the pretest, was administered prior to the intervention to both the groups. Furthermore, students with low scores in the pretest (low achievers) were distributed between the experimental and control group. The experimental group received instruction based on Interpretation Construction (ICON) Design Model. The control group received the traditional method of instruction. Post-test was conducted and mean scores were computed for the groups. Mean, Standard deviation'– test and Analysis of covariance were used to arrive at the following conclusions: (i) Students taught through constructivist approach, ICON model, gained significantly higher score as compared to their counterpart taught by traditional method. Based on the ‘t' value of 0.948 at 0.005 level with df 56, there was no significant difference between the mean achievement of the experimental group and control group before the intervention. However, there existed a significant difference between the mean achievement of the experimental group and control group after the intervention (t value 4.271 at 0.001 level with df 56). (ii) Low achievers learnt better through a constructivist approach and gained significantly higher score as compared to their counterpart taught by traditional method. There was also no significant difference between mean achievement scores of low achievers from both the groups before intervention (t value 0.638 at 0.001 level with df 56). But the researcher found a significant difference between the mean achievement scores post-intervention (t value 3.707 with df 15 at 0.001 level). Based on the above conclusions, it is recommended that the English language taught through ICON model leads to better achievement among the students.