Integrating Ivatan Indigenous Games to Learning Module in Physics: Its Effect to Student Understanding, Motivation, Attitude, and Scientific Sublime

The Philippines is lagging behind in physics education based on recent results of national and international assessments. With a continuing endeavor to address this problem, a game-based learning module was innovated using the ADDIE model, integrating Ivatan indigenous games in a learning module in physics, to probe the effect of the developed module on Ivatan students’ understanding, motivation, attitudes, and scientific sublime. Furthermore, the study aimed to reintroduce the Ivatan indigenous games to the younger Ivatan learners of Batanes, Philippines, through physics, in an attempt to help preserve its culture and traditions by integrating it to the teaching-learning process. The module underwent validation among four experts which yielded a Highly Acceptable and a Good Agreement rating. The material was tested with twenty SHS students under the STEM strand in a quasi-experimental research setup. A thirty-item test, the PMQ-II, the CLASS, and open-ended journal questions were the instruments used to test the module’s effectiveness. Results revealed a significant difference [Mdiff= -2.65] in student understanding with a 0.31 small effect size; students’ motivation revealed a significant difference [Mdiff = -0.91] with a large effect size of 0.86; and student attitudes revealed a significant difference [Mdiff = -0.44] with a medium effect size of 0.78. The correlation between understanding, motivation, and attitudes [rund-mot = 0.65; rund-att = 0.83; rmot-att = 0.72] were all positive uphill relationships. Lastly, responses from the journal revealed that the most common feedback among learners was the extreme feeling of happiness while generating only 5% of sublime feelings such as extreme awe/amazement/overwhelmed. These results revealed that the developed material effectively improved students’ understanding, motivation, and altering attitudes to a favorable state while realizing that it is unsuccessful in fostering scientific sublime.