Liam Webb

Abstract: 

There is little credible research done about the varying methods of solving systems of linear equations and their effectiveness in teaching high school students. The researcher specifically focused on three methods, two commonly used methods, substitution and graphing, and one unused, the manipulation of matrices. In order to find if one of the above approaches was more effective at improving student knowledge and understanding, a study was conducted on a group of nine high school students, where each grade at the high school and five different levels of math classes were represented. In the study, they had to take a pretest that was six questions long and had three questions, watch a video about one of three varying methods, substitution, graphing, and matrices, and then take an identical structured post test. Using an improvement score, posttest score minus pretest score, the researcher then compared these scores across the three methods to conclude that no method was significantly better or worse than the other methods. The consequences of this mean that all three methods of solving systems of linear equations should be taught equally, as they are taught right now, but the use of matrices should be implemented as an option for students to learn.