A Comparative Study of Effectiveness of Teaching Mathematics through Conventional & Vedic Mathematics Approach

Vedic mathematics is the name given to the ancient Indian system of mathematics that was rediscovered in the early twentieth century from ancient Indian scripture namely Atharvaveda. The study was intended to compare the effectiveness of teaching mathematics through conventional and Vedic mathematics approach in the terms of students’ achievement in mathematics. In this experimental study, pretest-posttest equivalent control groups design was used having randomly selected sample of 30 students in each group from BKT Inter College, Lucknow. The study covered the major topics of UP Basic Education Board class VIII mathematics syllabus viz., square, square-root, factorization of algebraic expressions and simultaneous simple equations. Mean, standard deviation, t-test and effect size were used for analyzing the data collected through self-made Achievement Tests in Mathematics (ATM) as pretest and posttest. Students’ achievement in mathematics of experimental group on posttest was significant over that of control group. No significant difference was found between male and female students in each group on posttest. Effect size was calculated as Glass’ Δ which was 0.902. Thus the Vedic mathematics approach is found highly effective for enhancing the students’ achievement in mathematics as well as that of male and female students equally.