ASSESSMENT OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF INTEGRATED SCIENCE CURRICULUM IN JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN NIGERIA

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1         Background to the Study

There has been growing concern throughout the country over the years about the discouraging state of teaching and learning of Integrated Science. This has arisen mainly as a result of a failure within teaching-learning contexts to illustrate the connections between classrooms Integrated Science and the environment learners come from. It has been argued that junior secondary school (JSS) students must be well grounded in Integrated Science at this level for them to be able to study the core science subjects (Biology, Chemistry, Physics etc). This has resulted in a call by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) for setting up a committee to look into Integrated Science as a subject (Olarewaju, 1994). The committee recommended the following specific methods for teaching Integrated Science:

1. Use of discovery teaching tactics

• The inclusion of problem solving activities

• The involvement of students in open ended field or laboratory exercise (Olarewaju, 1994).

The efforts of the committee were expected to bring about a change in focus in the teaching and learning of the subject. For changes to be effectively implemented in Integrated Science education, it is necessary that base line information should be available on a number of important aspects. Such aspects include, for example, how teachers view the subject, issues relating to attitudes towards the subject, Integrated Science anxiety and others. In Nigeria, while research has focused on a number of aspects related to Integrated Science Education, there has been no research focusing on teachers‟ view of Integrated Science. Hence, this study was embarked upon in order to know the opinions and comments of science teachers on Integrated Science curriculum implementation.

The views scale used by the researcher to tease out students‟ views of Integrated Science was adopted from the one used by Arigbabu (2005), developed by Gunstone (1991) and Crawford (1998). The scale is divided into two categories.

Fragmented and cohesive: In fragmented view, Integrated Science was seen to be about principles, formula and scientific calculations, while in cohesive view, it was viewed as a complex, logical system that helped in providing insights for understanding our environment. Of significance here was the fact that fragmented conception was associated with surface approaches while cohesive was associated with deep approaches to learning (Arigbabu, 2005). These categorizations have a bearing on higher order learning skills and outcomes; hence, they are very important for Integrated Science students. To encourage higher order learning skills and to improve teaching and learning of Integrated Science, it is essential that students are discouraged from resorting to unnecessary retention of facts, where the sole aim is to consciously recall information in the memory so as to use it later (Cooper, Fromme, Gordon and Nicholasm, 2002). The aim therefore should be to ensure that learning environments that encourage higher order learning skills are created. It has also been argued that teachers should organize the teaching and learning context in such a way that students are more likely to follow higher order processes (Biggs, 1999).

If teachers are to be entrusted with the role of ensuring that appropriate environments are created for enhancing students higher order learning skills, it is expedient that empirical research finds out the views which Science teachers hold about Integrated Science. This is paramount because educators have to find ways of injecting new knowledge into the system to bring about

improvement and to share that knowledge with future generations of teachers (Hiebert, Gallimore and Stigler, 2002). Such knowledge and information should help provide guidance on necessary changes that could be effected in order to address issues including teaching for higher order learning skills among pre-service teachers.

ASSESSMENT OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF INTEGRATED SCIENCE CURRICULUM IN JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN NIGERIA