Effect of Demonstration Method on Academic Performance of Secondary School Chemistry Students in Writing and Balancing of Chemical Equation in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area in Rivers State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated the effect of demonstration method on academic performance of senior secondary school chemistry students in writing and balancing of chemical equation. A total of 240 students from four (4) (two private and two public) Secondary Schools in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area in Rivers State formed the subjects of the study. The population was 3024 students in all. A pretest posttest non-randomized control group quasi-experimental design was adopted. Drilling exercise on writing and balancing of chemical equation was adopted for the students in the experimental groups while drilling exercise was not carried out on the control groups. An instrument consisting of 20 items multiple choice Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT) covering chemical reactions and their equations of 0.78 reliability coefficient was used to assess students’ academic performance. The data collected was analyzed using mean and standard deviation for the three research questions and ANCOVA for the three null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results showed that the experimental groups performed significantly better than their counterparts. Furthermore, the results revealed though not significant but slightly higher mean achievement scores for female against the male counterpart. This pattern was also observed for the school type. Based on these findings, it was recommended among others that Chemistry teachers should endeavor to regularly expose their students to drilling exercise on writing and balancing of chemical equation to secure meaningful learning in Chemistry.