The acquisition of some geometrical concepts among Kikuyu Primary School children

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate some variables that influence the acquisition of the concepts of length, area, and internal volume. Precisely, the effect of age as measured by grade, and sex were studiedo The study also attempted to find out whether length, area, and internal volume conservation were mastered concurrently. The sample used for this study consisted of 15 boys and 15 girls from each of standards one, three, five and seven, making a total of 120 subjects in all. These children ranged in age from six to fifteen years. •. All of the subjects attended a rural primary school in Kiambu District. The conservation of area tasks were administered first, followed by length and internal volumeo All the tasks were administered by the investigator herself in Kikuyu language. The tasks were given individually, to all the subjects in September and October, 1973. Based on Piaget's line of theorizing, it was predicted that: (i) Older children in higher grades (standard 5 and 7) would perform better on these conservation tasks than youngerchildren in lower grades (standards 1 and 3). "' (ii) Conservation of the three geometrical concepts would be concurrent. (iii) Boys would perform better than girls in all grades The obtained results indicated that older children performed significantly better than younger children, boys performed significantly better than girls, and finally, length was found to be an earlier acquisition than area and internal volume among girls. Among boys on the other hand, length was only an earlier acquisition than internal volume. For both groups of boys and girls, area and internal volume were mastered at the same time. Thus, the hypotheses that older children would perform better than younger children and that boys would perform better than girls were confirmed. There was little support for the hypothesis that length, area and internal volume would be mastered concurrently.