COMBINED EFFECTS OF PLAY-SIMULATIONS AND TEACHING WITH ANALOGY ON SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN CHEMISTRY
ABSTRACT
Excessive use of the lecture method in teaching science to secondary school students has been faulted by science educators: It leads to low and under achievements among other adverse effects. This study was therefore, carried out in response to the call on science teachers to evolve innovative, and if possible, integrated method techniques as alternatives to the over use of the lecture method. Consequently, the study investigated the effects of Play-Simulations and Teaching-With-Analogy (P-STWA) on achievements in Chemistry among secondary school students. The study was carried out in Owerri Education Zone of Imo State. From a population of 1,202 Senior Secondary School Class 2 (SS2) students, 270 were sampled from nine secondary schools that participated in the study. General Mental Ability Test (GMAT) was used to isolate a pool of students of average mental ability, from where the sample was randomly selected. A three experimental, control group pre-test, post-test design was adopted. Each of the nine schools involved represented a class and in each of the experimental or control groups, three school types were represented – Boys Only, Girls Only and Mixed Schools. While the experimental groups received six weeks of Chemistry lessons in the P-STWA method, the controls were divided into two – one group received their lessons (six weeks also) in the lecture method, the other received no lessons at all. All groups were administered with pre-test and post-test using teacher made Achievement Test in Chemistry (ATIC) research instrument. Four research questions guided the study and four hypotheses were also tested. ATIC was sub-divided into sections A, B, and C with KR21 reliability indices of 0.912, 0.868 and 0.892 respectively. Each section of ATIC tested achievement at a different cognitive ability level – Recall, Comprehension and Application respectively. Mean achievements were used to answer the research questions; Analysis of Co-variance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses. The results revealed that students taught chemistry using P-STWA method achieved significantly higher than those in the control groups. Among the P-STWA groups however, Boys Only schools achieved significantly higher than Girls and mixed schools only at the level of Application. Implications of the findings were highlighted. One major recommendation was that science teachers generally and chemistry teachers in particular should evolve integrated method techniques instead of relying solely on lecture method in delivering secondary school Chemistry lessons. Further research was suggested, especially in the area of male-female secondary school students’ achievement in science.