- By Merle L. Junsay and Edgardo P. Gerada
ABSTRACT
The objective of this quasi-experimental study was to investigate the effects of reflective journal writing to the students’ critical thinking and mathematical communication skills. There were two teaching strategies under investigation in this study: the lecture-discussion approach and the reflective journal writing approach. A total of 60 participants, 30 prospective teachers from two comparable classes underwent the two teaching approaches. The students’ critical thinking and mathematical communication skills were measured using researcher-made tests, which were content-validated and reliability tested. The lecture-discussion approach involved five phases: introduction, presentation, comprehensive monitoring, integration, and review and closure. The reflective journal writing approach involved initializing, exploring, and connecting process. Findings revealed that the performance of students in mathematical communication skills exposed to the lecture-discussion approach was significantly higher that the performance of students exposed to the lecture-discussion approach. In contrast, there was no significant difference in the mean gain scores in critical thinking for both lecture-discussion and reflective journal writing groups.