Effect of Constructivist Based Instructional Strategy on Senior Secondary School Students’ Achievement in Chemistry

Abstract

The study investigated the Effect Constructivist Based Instructional Strategy on Senior Secondary Students’ Achievement in Chemistry. The high rate of failure in Senior Secondary School Chemistry necessitated the study. The study employed a quasi-experimental design specifically, the pretest posttest non-equivalent control group design. The study was carried out in Abakaliki Education Zone of Ebonyi State. The population of the study is three thousand, two hundred and forty two (3,242) Senior Secondary School two (SS 2) students who were selected from the seventy eight (78) coeducational secondary schools in Abakaliki Education Zone. The sample consisted of one hundred and seventy four (174) senior secondary school two (SS 2) science students who were sampled from four coeducational senior secondary schools randomly selected from the four Local Government Areas that make up Abakaliki Education Zone. Two of the schools were assigned to treatment group while two were assigned to control group. Intact classes were used throughout the study. The treatment group was taught using constructivist based instructional strategy while the control group was taught using conventional method. Three research questions and three null hypotheses guided the study. A Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT) which is made up of thirty (30) items was used to collect data for the study. The data collected for the research questions were analyzed using mean and standard deviations while the hypotheses were tested using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) at 0.05 level of significance. The result of the study showed that Constructivist Based Instructional Strategy is superior to Conventional Method in facilitating students’ achievement in Chemistry. It also revealed that gender does not have an effect on the achievement of students when taught with Constructivist Based Instructional Strategy. It was also found that there is no interaction between method and gender on students’ achievement in Chemistry. This implies that the use of conventional method in teaching might have been partly responsible for the students’ poor performance in Chemistry. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that Constructivist Based Instructional Strategy should be used by Chemistry teachers in teaching both male and female students because it facilitates teaching and learning and does not discriminate across gender. It was also recommended that government should organize seminars, workshop and conferences with the aim of training Chemistry teachers on the effective use of Constructivist Based Instructional Strategy in teaching.