INNOVATIONS IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION IN NIGERIA by Ebele C. Okigbo, Nneka R. Nnorom, Ernest O. Onwukwe (the ebook reader .txt) 📖

achievement in chemistry.  The discussion so far shows that influence of gender on students’ achievement is still contradictory- some findings revealed gender insignificant in mean achievement of students; while some found otherwise. That means students’ achievement could be attributed to the effectiveness of teaching method or instructional approach used not biological factors, socio- economic and reasons as claimed by some researchers

Conclusion

The result obtained in the study on effect of regulatory self questioning strategy on  senior secondary school students' achievement in chemistry was found that; Students taught chemistry with RSQ had higher mean achievement scores than those students taught with lecture method. The influence of gender on students' achievement in gas laws concept was not significant, although the male students tended to be superior to their female counterpart when taught with RSQ.

 

Recommendations

Based on the finding of this study, the following recommendations were made;

Regulatory self questioning should be adopted by chemistry teachers, and curriculum planner, since it has found improved students' achievement in chemistry, Chemistry teachers should employ it more in the teaching of the subject especially for topic that student find difficulty.

Science teachers should be retrained on how to use regulatory self questioning in teaching and learning.

 

References

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EFFECT OF INSTRUCTION ON PUPILS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN BASIC SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY USING CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES IN ANAMBRA STATE

Fidelis C. Onwunyili

&

Maria C. Onwunyili

 

 

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the implementation of an instruction using Classroom Assessment Techniques (CAT) in Basic Science, in primary schools. Moreover, it aims to determine whether using CAT while teaching contributes positively to pupils’ learning as measured by pupils’ feedback. The study adopted a pre-test post-test quasi experimental design. A study group was selected purposively in accordance with the objectives of the study and a multiple-choice test comprised of 25 items was developed to test participants’ levels of knowledge before and after the experimentation. The study was conducted using 80 pupils, The pre-test and post-test scores of the pupils in both the experimental and control groups were analyzed using descriptive statistics and compared using both paired and independent samples t tests.  Pre-test results suggested no significant difference between the learning levels of pupils in the experimental group and pupils in the control group. At the end of the teaching process, pupils’ achievement levels in both groups demonstrated significant progress. A comparison between post-test scores revealed that students in the experimental group had significantly better scores than those in the control group.

 

Keywords: Instruction, Academic Achievement, Basic Science and Technology, Classroom Assessment Techniques

 

Introduction

Instruction as a purposeful direction of the learning process and the major teacher activity is the systematic presentation of content assumed necessary for mastery. It is vital to education as it is the transfer of learning from one person to another. This learning is achieved in the classroom setting through an assessment process.

 

Assessment is unquestionably one of the teacher’s most complex and important tasks. What teachers assess and how and why they assess it sends a clear message to students about what is worth learning, how it should be learned, and how well they are expected to learn it.

 

Mansson (2013) stressed that assessment becomes formative when the information is used to adapt teaching and learning to meet student needs. When teachers know how students are progressing and where they are having trouble, they can use this information to make necessary instructional adjustments, such as reteaching, trying alternative instructional approaches, or offering more opportunities for practice. These activities require feedback from students and lead to improved students’ learning feedback given as part of formative assessment helps learners become aware of any gaps that exist between their desired goal and their current knowledge, understanding, or skill and guides them through actions necessary to obtain the goal (Goldstein, 2007). The most helpful type of feedback on tests and homework provides specific comments about errors and specific suggestions for improvement and encourages students to focus their attention thoughtfully on the task rather than on simply getting the right answer (Mansson, 2013).

  

An Assessment Technique that is generally simple, non-graded, anonymous, in-class activities designed to give you and your students useful feedback on the teaching-learning process as it is happening is called Classroom Assessment Technique (Angelo and Cross 1993).Classroom assessment technique, as popularized by Cross and Angelo (1993), has the following characteristics. It is:  

 

Learner-centere. Classroom assessment is designed to be used between teaching and testing to find out how well students are doing in time to help them improve.  

Teacher-directed. Because classroom assessment occurs in instructors’ classrooms, faculty members make all the choices about implementation, including how to handle the results.  

Mutually beneficial for the learner and the faculty member. Both parties are more aware of the learning that is or perhaps is not taking place.  

Formative.  The main purpose of classroom assessment is to improve learning in progress by providing teachers with feedback on their teaching effectiveness and student comprehension. Daily instructional decisions can be changed. Students can be provided with information that can help them learn more effectively.  

Context-specific.  The CAT a teacher chooses is selected, designed and used for a specific class for the benefit of that class.  

On-going. By their nature, CATs encourage a continuous feedback loop.  

Firmly rooted in good practice.  Classroom assessment techniques enhance student learning by: focusing attention, encouraging deep processing and connecting it to other information from the learner’s background, and encouraging metacognition, i.e., thinking about learning.  The primary goal of classroom assessment is to better understand your students’ learning and to improve your teaching.

 

 

Moreover, they asserted that the use of these techniques will help the learners become more aware of their own learning process and explained 50 different techniques of Classroom Assessment. Since not all of these techniques are considered in the present study, only two of them are used in the study. Minute paper that assesses students’ accumulation of knowledge into already established structures; and One-Sentence Summary that assesses students’ skill in synthesis and creative thinking.

Minute Paper is one of most used CAT by Angelo and Cross. It is versatile technique also known as the One-Minute Paper and the Half-Sheet Response. It provides a quick and extremely simple way to collect written feed-back on student learning. To use the Minute Paper, an instructor stops class two or three minutes early and asks students to respond briefly to some variation on the following two questions: “What was the most important thing you learned during this class?” and “What important question remains unanswered?” Students write their responses on index cards or half-sheets of scrap paper hence the name “Half-Sheet Response” and hand them in. The great advantage of Minute Papers is that they provide manageable amounts of timely and useful feedback using a minimal investment of time and energy. By asking students what they understand to be the most significant things they are learning and what their major questions are, the teacher can quickly check how well those students are learning what they are teaching. That feedback can help teachers decide whether any mid-course corrections or changes are needed and, if so, what kind of instructional adjustments to make. At the same time, getting the instructor’s feedback on their Minute Papers helps students learn how experts in a given discipline distinguish the major points from the details. The Minute Paper also ensures that students’ questions will be raised, and in many cases answered, in time to facilitate further learning (Angelo & Cross, 1993).

 

Despite their simplicity, minute papers assess more than mere recall. To select the most important or significant information, learners must evaluate what they recall.  Repeated use of minute papers helps students learn to focus more effectively during instructions (Mansson, 2013).  

 

One-Sentence Summary is one of the important CATs that stimulates the student to create, and allow the teacher to assess, original intellectual products that result from a synthesis of course/subject content and the students’ intelligence, judgment, knowledge, and skills. The instructor asks students to answer the questions about a given topic: Who does what to whom, when, where, how and why'? Then the student is asked to transform the responses to those questions into a single, grammatical sentence.  

 

Nartgun (2010) opined that the teacher gauges the extent to which students can summarize a large amount of information concisely and completely. Students are constrained by the rules of sentence construction and must also think creatively about the content learned. Students practice the ability to condense information into smaller, interrelated bits that are more easily processed and recalled.  

 

The task works well when there is information that can be summarized in declarative form, including historical events, political processes, the plots of stories and novels, chemical reactions, mechanical processes (Agrawal & Khan, 2008). The information assesses answers to each of the initial questions separately. Often it is easiest to grade responses to each of the questions as inadequate (incorrect), adequate,