Effects of constructivist teaching approach on students’ achievement and attitude towards secondary school chemistry in Baringo North District, Kenya

Abstract

Chemistry teaching and learning is important in any society because it is one of the key subject in the socio-economic development of the society. It is offered in the secondary school curriculum and examined at Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) Examinations. It helps learners to acquire knowledge of facts, principles and events of nature, enabling them to live intelligent and efficient lives in the modern society. Despite its usefulness, the students’ performance in Chemistry in National Examinations has been poor thus affecting their enrollment in chemistry related courses in colleges and universities. The teaching approach used by a teacher may affect the students’ performance in the subject. The constructivist teaching approach may help improve students’ performance in Chemistry, but its usefulness is not known. Therefore this study sort to investigate the effect of the constructivist teaching-learning approach on students’ achievement and attitude in the learning of Chemistry. Quasi-experimental research which involved Solomon-Four Non-Equivalent Control Group Design was employed. The population of the study was Form Two learners in Baringo North District. The sample size was 160 Form Two students out of a total population of 1260 from four District co-educational public boarding schools purposively sampled. The four schools were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. The instruments used in the study were Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT) and Students’ Attitude Scales (SAS). Pilot test was done in a school within the Baringo North District but a different division from the schools under study to ascertain the instruments’ validity and reliability. To maintain validity, three experts from the Department of Curriculum Instruction and Education Management validated the instruments. The Cronbach’s coefficient alpha method was used to estimate the reliability coefficient of SAS and the reliability coefficient of the CAT was calculated using Kuder-Richardson formula 21(KR-21).The reliabilities of SAS and CAT were found to be 0.7591 and 0.7823 respectively which were above the threshold value of 0.7 recommended for the research. The students took a pre-test then a post-test after the treatment followed by post group discussions. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Quantitative data were subjected to t-test, ANOVA and ANCOVA at coefficient alpha (α) equal to 0.05 level of significance with the help SPSS computer package. Results of the study showed that the constructivist teaching–learning approach is highly effective on enhancing students’ chemistry achievement but no significant difference was found in their attitudes towards chemistry. The results of this study may be beneficial to curriculum developers, teacher trainers and chemistry teachers in improving the teaching- learning process in Chemistry.