EFFECT OF CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH ON CHEMISTRY STUDENTS PERFORMANCE IN SOME SELECTED SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN NIGERIA (A CASE STUDY OF JALINGO L.G.A TARABA STATE)

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Education is a social process that changes society as well as adult’s role of society, shifting responsibilities of education from parents to teacher and from family to school. Societies change its effective use of education in designing, developing, producing, implementing and evaluating curriculum. It aids teaching learning process in a classroom situation, increases both learning outcome and students’ achievements, reduces students’ dropouts and burden, stress, anxieties and frustration. So today’s development of new teaching strategies is essential for all-round developments of students.  Chemistry is taught in most schools as an abstract subject without much emphasis on practical experiences (Ghassan, 2007). This has resulted to students’ low acquisition of science processing skills which has become more evident in the mass failure of students in the subject in public examinations. All the questions asked to test the knowledge of chemistry students’ in practical skills require that they demonstrate one form of process skill or the other. The inability of students to carry out these activities properly results in low scores in the test of practical knowledge. The shift from the teacher-centred method of teaching science to student-centred activity based method encourages and develops in the child the spirit of inquiry. The student-centred activity method as opined by Akinbobola (2006) attempts to make students fully aware as well as understand the ways scientists work and also equip and prepare them for their possible careers in science, chemistry in particular, and process skills development. At the age of information, the rapid changes occurring in technology make obsolete the newly produced information’s and changes them in a very short time. Every society, institutions and individuals are usually obliged to keep up with these changes. This is the reason that faces to all these changing institutions and changing situations, the self-renewal and development have become now a necessity. In this case, instead of learning by heart information’s, individuals have the responsibility of producing new information’s and products based on this ancient knowledge. This obligation for individuals led by the age of information has also affected education systems and institutions. Now, a system where learner receive all information as ready from the teacher is considered inadequate, but instead, it is necessary to pass a system where, the learners are active in their educational environment, con figurate the old information in mind with new information, and use this information in order to produce new information. Because of this necessity, many countries change their traditional education system and adopt the constructivist learning approach and they organized their institutions of education accordingly. Due to the situations discussed above, in the researches and discussions about the education, the constructivism is, now, more and more, used in a remarkable way (Cunningham and Duffy, 2012). The constructivism is finding its place in the studies in different fields. The constructivism, which is a training theory and which is based on knowledge of the age of Socrates, is not only a concept of education. The constructivism, which is, at the same time, an epistemological theory and a concept, is knowledge and learning approach (Haney and McArthur, 2015). In terms of education, the constructivism is seen as an educational framework that appears very often in the studies of educational literature (Kinnucan-Welsch and Jenlink, 2009). According to this theory, learning is a process of establishing a link between the new information and the information that exists in individuals, during this process. The individual information is not piled on; individual establishes the basis of information by adding his own comment. By this aspect, teachers have an important role in the constructivist approach in which the core of learning system is the learner. With this approach, teachers do not directly transfer the information to the students; but they guide and help learners to reach the information and to construct it (Bryant, Kastrup, Udo, Hislop, Shefner and Mallow, 2013). As an intermediary between the students and education programs, teachers help them to learn and to develop their self (Holt-Reynolds, 2010). Teachers organize the learning process according to students' interests and needs, to incite to ask questions, to produce the new ideas, to make estimations and observations, to work in collaboration and to test their ideas (Kim, 2009). In relation with these aspects, constructivism requires the regulation of the academic environment which must be different from the traditional classroom environment.

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

Today, we see an increasing number of scientific studies. Different results made on a specific issue, are obtained from studies realized independently from each other. Even though studies enable comprehensive generalizations themselves, they cannot provide a comprehensive description because of limitations such as sample size, time, transportation, number of practitioners. Because of the nature of the sciences of the education, in the research, the events and the facts are examined in their environment. The researcher try to explain and to comment on the events and on the facts intervened in their own environment (Yıldırım and Şimşek, 2011). In order to make a more general description, important works obtained after scanning of literature works are benefited from many other studies (Cooper, 2010). This idea is the basis of the literature and the purposes of meta-analysis. Major studies through gathering synthesized individual work allow to the policymakers and researchers to see the big picture providing scientific generalizations and to give the opportunity for making an overall assessment. It is scientifically proved to what extent it is important to have applicable results in the social and behavioural sciences and it is necessary to have brief, feasible works and which will have the quality to be the bases of the new works (Özcan, 2008). For more than a decade now, the different instructional strategies employed in teaching chemistry have not improved students’ achievement in the subject to an appreciable extent. It is therefore, pertinent at this critical time when high premium is placed on science and technology as the bedrock of national development and advancement to search for an approach for teaching chemistry in order to enhance maximum outcome. In these studies, the effects of the constructivist approach on chemistry student’s performance are examined.

AIMS OF THE STUDY

The major purpose of this study is to examine effect of constructivist approach on chemistry student’s performance. Other general objectives of the study are:

1. To examine the extent to which the use of problem based learning technique will enhance the academic achievements of students with low ability level and those taught with conventional method in chemistry.
2. To examine the different dimension(s) of achievement in chemistry of Secondary School students.
3. To examine the effect of constructivist approach on students’ academic achievement in chemistry.
4. To examine the factors influencing chemistry students academic performance.
5. To examine the relationship between students’ achievement in Chemistry when taught by the Constructivist Teaching Approach (CTA) and when taught by the conventional teaching methods.
6. To examine the factors hindering effective use of constructivist approach in secondary schools.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1. What is the extent to which the use of problem based learning technique will enhance the academic achievements of students with low ability level and those taught with conventional method in chemistry?
2. What are the different dimension(s) of achievement in chemistry of Secondary School students?
3. What are the effects of constructivist approach on students’ academic achievement in chemistry?
4. What are the factors influencing chemistry students academic performance?
5. What is the relationship between students’ achievement in Chemistry when taught by the Constructivist Teaching Approach (CTA) and when taught by the conventional teaching methods?
6. To examine the factors hindering effective use of constructivist approach in secondary schools.

RESEARCH HYPOTHESES

H0: There is no significant effect of constructivist approach on student’s academic performance and their attitude towards chemistry

H1: There is no significant relationship between constructivist approach and students academic performance on chemistry

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The study is significant and the findings would benefit every stakeholder in education. The beneficiaries include the teachers, school management, parents, and students, ministries of education, Educational researchers, nongovernmental Organizations and general society at large in that the solution that will be provided in this work will help to enhance academic performance of the students, if it will be used in the course of recruiting teacher. It will help the teachers to improve better on his teaching method in order to enhance good performance from his students. It will be useful and helpful to the policy makers especially the curriculum developer, inspector of education, examiners etc. by enabling the curriculum developer to know how to frame and design topics in a way that will also enable them to correct and improve the performance of the student by appraising the teaching methodology employed.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY 

The study is based on effect of constructivist approach on chemistry student’s performance in some selected secondary schools in Jalingo L.G.A

LIMITATION OF STUDY

Financial constraint- Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).

Time constraint- The researcher will simultaneously engage in this study with other academic work. This consequently will cut down on the time devoted for the research work.

DEFINITION OF TERMS

Constructivist Approach: This refers to knowledge constructed by connecting new ideas/experience to existing ideas /experience.

Performance: This refers to achievement of the students. Here, achievement refers to the scores obtained by secondary school students in science before and after using constructivist approach.

Secondary School students: The students studying in Class V to Class X are considered as secondary school students. ii) In this study, the researcher has selected Class IX students only