Effects Of Concept Mapping Combined With Activity-Based Methods As Strategy In Teaching Sound Wave On Secondary School Students’ Academic Achievement In Physics
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Effects Of Concept Mapping Combined With Activity-Based Methods As Strategy In Teaching Sound Wave On Secondary School Students’ Academic Achievement In Physics
Chapter one
INTRODUCTION
Background Of the Study
Education is a series of deliberate and purposeful acts and activities that have both formative and interventional impacts on an individual’s behaviour and character. Education can also be defined as the purposeful transmission of a society’s acquired knowledge, skills, and values from one generation to the next.
Olarinoye (2011) and Otulca (2016) argue that education is an instrument for all nations’ economic, political, and scientific progress. Education is the process of passing on and obtaining knowledge through teaching and learning, particularly in a school or similar institution (Encarta World English Dictionary, 2009).
An individual’s success in life is heavily dependent on their education. It teaches students the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life. In fact, education helps society grow and develop by effecting the required societal changes.
As a result, the establishment of science education was deemed critical to enabling science teaching and learning at any level of education. Science education is defined as the practice of communicating scientific material and processes with those who are not traditionally considered members of the scientific community.
Science education is critical to individuals’ lives as well as the scientific and technological growth of a nation (Alebiosu and Ifamuyiwa, 2008). It is commonly understood that scientific literacy, which can only be attained through science education, is the key to a nation’s scientific and technical existence.
As a result, the National Policy on Education (2008) stated that “science education shall emphasise the teaching and learning of science process and principles”. However, physics is a science education subject. Physics is taught at the second stage of secondary education (senior secondary school).
Secondary school physics prepares pupils for further physics education and to be productive members of society. To meet the goals of physics education at this level of education, the federal government has implemented effective, consistent, and outstanding policies and actions surrounding scientific education in general, and physics education in particular.
Some of these measures include the establishment of special science schools, intensified training of physics teachers through inclusion in the Technical Teachers Training Programme (TTTP), popularising science education (including physics), and producing an adequate number of scientists to inspire and support national development. These can be accomplished if interactive teaching practices are deemed relevant.
As a result, it has been recognised in recent years that one of the most difficult difficulties in teaching is to generate experiences that engage the student and promote his own thinking, explanation, evaluation, communication, and application of scientific models required to make sense of these experiences.
In science education, there is a growing awareness of the importance of learner-centeredness in the teaching-learning process, which has sparked a lot of interest in understanding how students learn and how to help them learn about scientific subjects.
According to Clibum (2009) and Danjuma (2005), these attempts help learners learn more effectively while also leading to the development of metacognitive methods to improve meaningful learning.
According to Novak, as described in Agaba (2013), meta-cognitive methods include meta-knowledge and meta-learning, both of which enable a student to take meaningful control of his or her own learning.
He went on to clarify that meta-knowledge is knowledge that deals with the nature of knowledge and knowing, whereas meta-learning is learning that deals with the nature of meaningful learning.
Similarly, in the age of knowledge explosion and technological transformation, rote learning is no longer acceptable or even effective in producing students capable of dealing with the vastly increased level of knowledge.
Today’s learners must develop many skills, such as interactive skills with people from various backgrounds, as well as sharing ideas and thinking skills, in order to meet their needs in terms of types of knowledge that will assist them in adapting to life and its various changing aspects, thereby enhancing their learning and achievement. As a result, effective teaching and learning methodologies are required in physics education.
Interactive engagement is widely recognised as a significant teaching and learning approach in physics. The guided-discovery technique was indicated in the physics curriculum as the best way to teach and learn physics, however research has revealed that the lecture method is still widely used (Farmobi, 2017). However, educational research has revealed that typical lecturing, in which pupils listen passively, can result in surprisingly little actual learning.
This depicts physics as an extremely abstract subject, which leads pupils to believe that studying physics is difficult and boring. Hobson (2009) states that a “student in physics learn only how to solve certain standard types of problems without actually learning the physics concepts that are the main point of the subject” .
In recent years, the researcher has noticed that behavioural methods are increasingly popular in schools where pupils are passive and the classroom environment is dominated by teachers.
However, the National Curriculum 2006, as outlined by Cheema and Mirza (2013), emphasises the need for a paradigm change from behaviourism to constructivism in order to improve conceptual learning in science and establish an attitude towards learning science in general, and physics in particular.
This curriculum requires teaching-learning practices that involve students in their own knowledge production, putting them at the focus of the learning activity and the teacher as a facilitator.
It should be highlighted that, despite the efforts of scientific educators such as Bello (2016) and Danjuma (2005) to develop an effective instructional plan for secondary school teaching.
There are still some complaints of low academic performance in public examinations such as NECO and WAEC in physics (Lakpini, 2014; Ogbenevwede, 2015; Adebayo, 2017; WAEC Chief Examiners Report, 2018).
Poor performance was attributed to the employment of an improper teaching style, incorrect spelling of technical words, and a lack of topic expertise. While Ornole (2017) believes that 75 percent failure in mathematics and sciences is concerning, the WAEC Chief Examiners Report (2018) stated that just 48.42 percent of credit passes were registered in the 2018/2019 NECO examination results in physics.
There is a need to identify educational tactics that students can relate to, share ideas, and interact academically with one another. As a result, the current study is being conducted to investigate the effects of concept mapping with activity-based combined as a strategy in teaching sound waves on secondary school students’ academic achievement in physics in Ukanafun Local Government Area, Akwa Ibom State, with the goal of providing solutions based on research findings on the subject.
1.2 Statement of Problem
According to recent media reports, student enrolment at universities for medicine, pharmacy, and physics-related disciplines is extremely low. This scenario was linked to pupils’ low performance in physics, particularly on the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and the Universal Tertiary and Matriculation Examination (UTME).
A credit pass in physics at WASSCE is required for admission to several important tertiary programs. Students’ poor physics achievement may be related to teachers’ ineffective use of instructional resources and teaching methods.
Similarly, in previous years, the physics chief examiner’s assessment has shown a consistent deterioration in candidates’ physics competence. Most of these reports showed that candidates performed badly on questions about sound waves and fluid pressure.
On this basis, the current researcher seeks to investigate whether teachers’ instructional styles contribute to student achievement. In particular, try concept mapping paired with activity-based techniques.
1.3 Objectives of the Study
The primary goal of this study was to see how idea mapping mixed with activity-based approaches as a strategy for teaching sound waves affected secondary school students’ academic progress in physics in Akwa Ibom State’s Ukanafun Local Government Area. Specifically, the study aims to:
Determine whether there is a difference in mean achievement scores between students who are taught sound waves using concept mapping mixed with activity-based methods and the lecture method.
Determine whether students’ mean achievement scores differ by gender when teaching sound waves using concept mapping and an activity-based technique.
Determine whether mean achievement scores differ by student ability level when sound waves are taught using concept mapping mixed with an activity-based approach.
Research Questions
Three research questions were posed to guide the study:
What is the difference in mean student scores when taught sound waves utilising concept mapping paired with activity-based strategy versus lecture method?
What is the difference in mean scores by gender when teaching sound waves using concept mapping and an activity-based method as a strategy?
What is the difference in mean scores of students by ability level when taught sound waves utilising concept mapping and activity-based methods as a strategy?
Research Hypotheses
Three research hypotheses were developed to help guide the study:
There is no significant difference in students’ mean achievement scores when taught sound waves utilising concept mapping mixed with an activity-based strategy vs a lecture method.
There is no significant difference in mean achievement ratings across genders when sound waves are taught using concept mapping paired with activity-based approaches.
When teaching sound waves using concept mapping mixed with an activity-based method, there is no significant difference in mean achievement scores among students of different ability levels.
Significance of the Study
The study’s findings will be extremely valuable to students, teachers, school administrators, policymakers, and researchers in the following ways:
The findings of the study will assist students of science and physics in particular in identifying learning strategies that improve retention.
It will encourage students to use the concept mapping approach because it helps find links that facilitate the acquisition of scientific knowledge.
It will educate instructors on the importance of using concept maps and guided discovery in physics instruction.
It will help education managers select teaching techniques that are most suited for science instruction and monitor the teaching strategies used by science instructors in schools.
This will help to sustain the shift from teacher-centeredness to learner-centeredness.
It will also assist education management in seeing the need of providing enough instructional facilities and a favourable teaching learning environment that encourages hands-on, minds-on learning.
The study’s findings will serve as a foundation for policymakers as they make decisions on scientific teaching practices.
The study’s findings will be useful to scholars who wish to do additional research on a related topic.
Limitation of the Study
The study focused on idea mapping mixed with activity-based strategies for teaching sound waves to secondary school physics students.
Three key issues arose during the course of the study, posing a considerable threat to the exercise’s effectiveness.
First, there was a realistic budgetary constraint in terms of finances for procuring and processing study materials. This predicament occurred because the researcher received no external funding other than the financial contribution of his parents, which was insufficient for a study of this size.
Second, the researcher encountered a climate challenge. This is because the majority of the research was conducted during the rainy season, which impacted the coverage of the greater scope recommended by the research topic. As a result, it is necessary to cover some of the area’s secondary schools.
Third, the researcher encountered a time constraint because the school authority’s one-year deadline for completing and submitting this study was insufficient for comprehensive treatment of the topic.
This is because the researcher was also preoccupied with other academic topics at the time, which constituted a substantial danger to successful covering of the broadest breadth. As a result, only SS2 physics students in several selected secondary schools in Akwa Ibom State’s Ukanafun Local Government Area were chosen, and the study was limited to them.
Definition of Terms:
The following terms were operationally defined.
Concept mapping is a teaching method that uses schematic diagrams to express a set of topic-related concepts. The arrangement is incorporated in the prepositional framework of the interaction between the concepts, as illustrated in the diagram.
A teaching strategy is one that combines two or more ways to teach students in a learner-centred process (Awodeyi 2017).
Activity-based learning (ABL) is a learning style in which students actively participate in the learning process. In other words, teaching is learner-centred.
Sound waves are air pressure disturbances caused by vibration. A turning fork, a guitar string, the column of air in an organ pipe, the head of a snare drum, steam escaping from a radiator, the reed on a clarinet, the diaphragm of a loudspeaker, the vocal cords, or virtually anything that vibrates in a frequency range that a listener can hear.
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