Abstract

The Philippines’ education system is still dominated by traditional mathematics teaching, which frequently overlooks the goal of mathematics education—to prepare students to deal successfully with real-life situations. This affects the declining performance of the students in their overall mathematical ability, especially in problem-solving. Hence, this study utilized a pre-experimental design to measure the effectiveness of the Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) approach in the problem-solving skills of the students in terms of understanding the problem, devising a plan, carrying out the plan, and looking back. Furthermore, the cluster sampling technique was used in choosing thirty-five (35) grade 9 students and evaluated their problem-solving ability using a pre-test and post-test assessment. Based on the result, there is a highly significant difference in the mean pre-test and post-test performance of the respondent before and after using the RME approach in all the four phases of problem-solving (p-value=0.000). This implies that the RME is an effective teaching approach that successfully improved the Mathematical proficiency of the students, especially in all aspects of problem-solving skills. According to the findings, the researchers may advise educators to use the RME approach to expose their students to more collaborative teaching-learning processes that incorporate real-world scenarios.

Keywords: Didactical Phenomenology, Emergent Model, Guided Reinvention, Problem-solving Skills, Realistic Mathematics Education Approach

*This paper is a finalist in the International Research Competitions 2022, Category 2 Undergraduate

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