Integration of indigenous knowledge systems in improving grade 9 indigenous people students' performance in physics
Keywords:
indigenous knowledge systems, physics education, indigenous people (ip) students, work, power, and energy, quasi-experimental designAbstract
Physics instruction for Indigenous People (IP) students often follows Western format which lacks cultural relevance for them, resulting in low engagement and poor performance. While the integration of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) has shown benefits in other scientific disciplines, there is still limited empirical evidence of its effectiveness in Physics. This study addresses the gap by examining the effectiveness of integrating IKS in improving the performance of the Grade 9 IP students in work, power, and energy. A quasi-experimental pre-test and post-test design were utilized to the 30 IP students from Cabugao National High School which were evenly assigned to control (Conventional Teaching Method) and experimental (IKS-integrated) groups. A validated 15-item researcher-made test measured the change in their performance. Mann-Whitney Test was used to analyze for group comparisons and the Wilcoxon Signed-Ranks Test for the differences within the groups. Pre-test results revealed no significant difference between the two groups, ensuring baseline equivalence. Post-test results, on the other hand, revealed that both groups improved significantly, however, the experimental group attained higher mean scores than the control group, attaining a significant post-test difference. Both methods were effective but the IKS-integrated approach showed higher improvement gains and reduced performance variability, indicating an equitable learning experience, aligning with research showing that indigenized and culturally contextualized lessons significantly improved the performance of the IP students compared to conventional teaching methods. The study concludes that integrating IKS into Physics lessons, particularly work, power, and energy significantly improved the performance of the IP students.
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Data Availability Statement
The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to privacy restrictions regarding student academic records. However, anonymized data, along with the localized Physics curriculum integration materials, are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Elgemar I. Mindoro, Jemma Rose P. Baylon, Joycel I. Candelario, Vheean H. Moreno, Efren Mae E. Warain, Benjamin Cerezo II (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
