EFFECT OF CONSTRUCTIVIST TEACHING STRATEGY ON SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN WAVES AND OPTICS CONCEPTSIN DUTSIN-MA METROPOLIS

EFFECT OF CONSTRUCTIVIST TEACHING STRATEGY ON SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN WAVES AND OPTICS CONCEPTS IN DUTSIN-MA METROPOLIS. A RESEARCH PROJECT TOPIC ON SCIENCE EDUCATION

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the effects of constructivist teaching strategy on senior secondary students’ achievement in waves and optics concepts in physics in Dutsinma metropolis. The study adopts quasi experimental design using pretest – post-test non randomized design. The population of the study was 659 SSII physics students in Dutsinma metropolis. Two co-educational schools were purposively sampled. The sample size used was 147 students. The study was guided by two research questions and two hypotheses. Pretest was administered to the research subjects before the actual experiment. The experimental group was treated using constructivist strategy while the control group was treated using the conventional lecture method. The experiment lasted for four weeks. At the end of the experiment, posttest was administered. Waves and Optics Achievement Test (WAOAT) with a reliability coefficient of 0.76 was used for data Collection. Descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation was used in answering the research questions while the t-test was used to test the hypotheses. Findings of the study showed that students taught waves and optics using constructivist strategy achieved significantly higher than those taught using conventional method. The findings also show that there was no significant effect of gender on student when taught waves and optics using constructivist strategy i.e. the strategy is gender friendly.