TEACHERS’ COGNITIVE QUESTIONING STYLES AND THEIR EFFECTS ON ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN INTEGRATED SCIENCE IN GIWA INSPECTORATE DIVISION

CHAPTER ONE

THE PROBLEM

1.1 Introduction

For over five decades, a number of efforts have been made nationally and

internationally to improve the teaching and learning of science in schools. This has been

a subject of considerable concern in Nigeria. The central concern has been to make the

teaching and learning of science in the classroom more meaningful and more effective in

order to achieve the educational goals of the society.

Effective science teaching involves student’s active participation in the teachinglearning

process, mo re especially as it involves asking and answering questions. Lack of

active participation of students has been described as one of the factors responsible for

poor academic performances in science subjects (Inyang, 1988, Bichi; 1988, Mari, 1994

and Usman, 2001). It has also been indicated in WAEC chief examiners report (2004)

results of secondary schools where students performances are generally poor in Biology,

Chemistry, Physics and other science related subjects. They perform poorly in questions

that require high-level cognitive domain (Winne, 2007). The reason why students

perform poorly in questions at high level cognitive domain could be that teachers

frequently ask questions that are low in cognitive domain. Therefore the aim of

enhancing student’s academic achievement will not be realized if questions asked by

teachers are not in conformity with demands of all the levels of Bloom’s taxonomy of

educational objectives (cognitive domain).

Integrated science was introduced as a foundation to the science courses as well

as to promote scientific literacy amongst the Nigeria youths; this is introduced at the

lower level of education. It is supposed to give the students the basic scientific

knowledge they need as well as to equip them to be scientifically literate. This is because

most of the students terminate their science learning at the junior secondary school level.

Integrated science as defined by Olanrewaju (1983) is an approach to science in

which concepts and principles are presented so as to express the functional unity of

scientific thought. The aim of integrated science programme as stated by Usman (2001)

is to enable students achieve the process and product content of integrated science. The

National Policy on Education (FME, 2004) include integrated science as a core subject at

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the junior secondary school level in its curriculum. Integrated science emphasizes the

teaching and learning processes which lead to fundamental foundation in the sciences at

all levels of education.

Low academic achievement of students in the sciences, integrated science

inclusive, has been a growing concern in the school. To this effect, scholars have carried

out studies to investigate the factors that may be responsible. Some of these factors have

been linked to the non-availability of teaching materials, lack of adequate laboratory and

it facilities, and the methods of teaching used by the teachers among others (Usman, 2007

and 2008).

For students to achieve high in science, the teacher has to use a strategy which

will enable the students to understand science concepts and create conducive

environment that will change effective teacher-student interaction. The teacher must

know the extent to which students have knowledge of a learning task. This is a

prerequisite for effective teaching (Bloom, 1981, Hargreaves, 1984).The student

unfortunately is not a transparent box through which the teacher can see and read the

amount of knowledge that has been or is being acquired. The teacher should be able to

assess the student’s understanding of science concept through questioning based on his

experiences in teaching/learning outcome in accordance with Bloom’s taxonomy of

cognitive domain. The age-old technique made famous by Socrates and practiced by

classroom teachers has been the use of questions to aid students in developing ideas and

conclusions and drawing their own inferences. Therefore a question is a direction to a

learner to examine instructional materials or his memory of it and to produce some

response (Redfield and Rouseau, 1981, Gandu, 2006).

The cognitive level of a question refers to the nature of cognitive processes

required to answer it. There are two broad types of cognitive question styles which are

the low-level and high level cognitive questions styles. Low-level questions are called

knowledge questions that require students to recall material easily from what they are

taught (Cotton, 2001). According to her, low-level questions help students to remember

factual information, study for test previously read or presented by a teacher. They are

designed to solicit from students’ concept, information, feeling or experiences that were

gained in the past and stored in the memory. They also include questions that can be

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answered with yes or no, a single word or a short phrase. Sample key words are;

complete, define, count, identify, list, name, recall, recite, observe, what, when, where

among others. Low-level cognitive questions according to (Callahan and Clark, 1988;

Gandu 2006) do not challenge the students’ ability to think, but only to remember. They

are used to reinforce learning and to check on students’ retention of what is learnt.

High-level cognitive questions are those requiring students to mentally

manipulate information they have learned and to answer with reasoned evidence (Brualdi,

1998). They are also called open-ended, interpretative, evaluative, inquiry, inferential and

synthesis questions that require skills. By using these skills, students do not remember

only factual knowledge, instead they use their knowledge to solve a problem, to think

intuitively, creatively, hypothetically, to analyze, to use their imagination, to expose a

value system, to make judgment and to evaluate (Derfel, 2002). According to him, it is

believed that high-level cognitive question style reveals whether or not a student has

grasped a concept taught. This is because a student needs to have a deep understanding of

the topic in order to answer this type of question, that is high-level cognitive question.

Sample key words, for high-level cognitive questions are: apply a principle, predict,

manipulate, generalize, hypothesize, judge, evaluate.

Various authors Brualdi, (1998) Cotton, (2001) Susan, (2001) have described the

impact of cognitive question styles on academic achievement of students as it developed

interest and motivate students to become actively involved in lessons. It also helps in

assessing students achievement of instructional goals and objectives. Arends (1994)

argues that many of the findings concerning the effects of using low-level cognitive

versus high-level cognitive questions have been inconclusive at secondary school level.

While some studies and popular belief favor asking high-level cognitive question, other

studies reveal the positive effect of asking low-level cognitive questions (Brualdi, 1998,

Gandu, 2006). Therefore based on the findings of the studies above using low-level and

high-level cognitive questioning styles, there is the need to investigate the effect of

teachers cognitive question styles on academic achievement of students in integrated

science.

In Nigeria and many other countries, women are grossly under-represented in

scientific and technological fields. Science educators have carried out a number of studies