Abstract:

Howard Gardner has rightly pointed out that a child has multiple intelligences due to which he follows different learning styles. Today, teachers are not only to focus on their teaching styles but also on the learning styles of the learner. Further, the commissions, committees and laws are making education servers accountable. Reports like Right to Education (India 2002), No Child Left behind Act (2002) have greatly increased the accountability of teachers, principals etc. The performance of the students is the strong indicator of student learning and growth, this has forced the teachers to re-examine their teaching methods. Theories of Piaget (1958), Bruner (1973) and Vygotsky (1978) indicated the necessity of employing multiple methods of presenting mathematical concepts because children of the same chronological age are not necessarily at the same stage of mental readiness (Vande Walle, 2007; Kamii and Rummelsburg, 2008).Clements (1999),suggested to include multisensory teaching techniques across variety of classrooms. Multisensory teaching technique is the process of learning new subject matter through the use of two or more senses viz. a viz., visual, auditory, tactile-kinesthetic even olfactory and taste.
In the present study, the investigator has focused on the effect of multisensory teaching strategy on the learning of concepts in mathematics among primary students. The study was conducted on 200 fifth grade students from the stage of Punjab, India. The course content of mathematics at primary stage was designed and developed according to the principals of multisensory teaching strategy. The designed content was taught to subjects of experimental group where in the conventional material was taught to the subjects of control group. The results concluded that multisensory teaching strategy yielded significant learning gain scores as compared to conventional teaching strategy. Further, low intelligence group taught through multisensory teaching strategy performed significantly better than low intelligent group taught through conventional teaching.

Keywords:

Multisensory Teaching Strategy, Mathematics Concepts, Learning Outcomes.