ABSTRACT
Despite the great importance of mathematics, a significant number of students still record mass failure in public examinations in Nigerian secondary schools. To some educationists this mass failure is linked to how the subject is taught. This study was designed to compare and analyze students’ performance in the discovery and expository methods of teaching mathematics among senior secondary school students in the Nassarawa Local Government Area of Kano State, Nigeria. Five items were raised as objectives, research questions and hypotheses respectively. A systematic random sampling was used to select 200 students from a population of 2,915 of of Senior Secondary School II (SSII) students. The experimental group was taught using the discovery method while the control group was taught using the expository method for teaching mathematics. The instrument used was a teacher-devised Mathematics Performance Test (MPT). The results of the study showed that students taught by the discovery method performed better than those taught by the expository method. Based on the findings of the research, it was recommended that mathematics teachers should use the discovery method in teaching mathematics in senior secondary schools. It was also recommended that there should be training and retraining of mathematics teachers on the use of the discovery method for teaching mathematics in secondary schools.
