Comparative Analysis of Traditional and Flipped Classroom Approaches in Teaching Algebra in Senior Secondary Schools in Borno State, Nigeria

This study examined the comparative effectiveness of traditional and flipped classroom approaches on senior secondary school students’ academic performance in algebra in Maiduguri Metropolis, Borno State, Nigeria. The research aimed to determine the levels of students’ academic performance when taught algebra using both approaches and to establish whether a significant difference existed between the two methods. A quasi-experimental research design was employed, using a multi-stage sampling procedure to select 210 senior secondary school II students from three public schools. Data were collected using a researcher-developed 50-item Algebra Performance Test (APT), validated by experts and administered as pre-test and post-test over six weeks. The analysis involved descriptive statistics of frequency and percentage to answer the research questions, and an independent samples t-test to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that under the traditional teaching method, 56.2% of students demonstrated moderate performance, 24.8% exhibited low performance, and only 19.0% achieved high performance. In contrast, under the flipped classroom approach, 45.7% of students demonstrated moderate performance, 41.0% exhibited high performance, and only 13.3% showed low performance. The hypothesis testing revealed a statistically significant difference in academic performance between the two groups (t=4.876, df=208, p=0.000), with the flipped classroom group achieving a substantially higher mean score (M=72.8, SD=14.2) compared to the traditional group (M=58.4, SD=12.6). The study concluded that the flipped classroom approach is significantly more effective in enhancing students’ academic achievement in algebra than the traditional teaching method. In light of these findings, the study recommended that the Borno State Government should provide adequate digital devices and offline learning resources to schools, the Ministry of Education should organize mandatory capacity-building workshops for mathematics teachers on flipped classroom implementation, and stakeholders in charge of senior secondary education should develop a context-specific implementation guide addressing local challenges such as large class sizes, limited resources, and students’ varying access to technology at home. These measures were deemed crucial for successfully adopting the flipped classroom approach to improve algebra performance in resource-constrained environments.