ASSESSMENT OF CLASSROOM INTERACTIONS AND SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ LEARNING OUTCOMES IN CHEMISTRY IN OYO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Statistics show that Senior Secondary School (SSS) students’ performance in chemistry in public examinations in Nigeria is slightly above average. Past studies on improving student performance have focused largely on teacher and student characteristics with little consideration for Pattern of Classroom Interactions (PCI) and the timing of interactions. Therefore, the study was designed to assess PCI (teacher-talk, student-talk, integrative and dominative teaching styles) and threshold time for a chemistry teacher to expose his or her typical interaction pattern to observers. The relative and joint contributions of PCI, Teacher Gender (TG) and Teacher Qualification (TQ) to SSS students’ learning outcomes (achievement and attitude) in Chemistry in Oyo State, Nigeria were also examined.

The study was anchored on Skinner’s Operant Conditioning and Kohn’s Student Directed Learning theories. Survey design and classroom observational techniques were adopted. Random sampling was used to select two out of eight educational zones in Oyo State and three Local Governments Areas (LGAs) from each of the two. Subsequently, three public SSS were randomly selected from each Local Governments and intact SSS II chemistry classes yielded a total of 1004 students(449 male and 555 female) and 18 Chemistry teachers (eight male and ten female) were observed. Modified Flanders 16-Category Interaction Analysis System (Scott’s pi = 0.96), Classroom Interaction Analysis Sheet (Scott’s pi = 0.85), Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT) (r = 0.86) and Students’ Attitude to Chemistry Questionnaire (SACQ) (r = 0.89) were used. Data were analysed using percentages, t-test, One-way ANOVA and Logistic regression at 0.05 level of significance.

In all four segments of 10 minutes threshold established during observation, teacher talk was predominant. Teacher-talk (73.8%) was far higher than student-talk (9.4%). Within the first 10 minutes, 70.0% of the teachers had shown the pattern of dominative teaching style. The differencebetween male and female teacher talk and student talk patterns was not significant. However, teacher qualification had a significant effect on pattern of teacher-talk (F(2, 15) = 4.96); B.Ed. teachers (x ̅= 32.17) were the least dominative, while B.Sc. teachers (x ̅=9.00) were the most dominative. Teachers of other qualifications had average mean of 26.00. Teacher qualification also had a significant effect on student-talk pattern (F(2, 15) = 4.96); B.Ed. teachers (x ̅= 34.83) were the least dominative, while the B.Sc. teachers (x ̅= 14.33) were the most dominative. Teachers with other qualifications performed variably with a mean score of 20.33. Although, PCI, TG and TQ jointly predicted achievement in chemistry (NagelkerkeR2 =0.01), only PCI [Exp (B) = .67] showed a significant effect independently. Students whose teachers were integrative had a higher score in CAT than those whose teachers were dominative. The PCI, TQ and TG jointly predicted attitude to chemistry (Nagelkerke R2 =0.02). However, PCI [Exp (B) = 1.48] and TG [Exp (B) = 1.31] were significant in predicting students’ attitude to chemistry independently.

Unlike the dominative, the integrative teaching style improved secondary school students’ achievement in and attitude to chemistry in Oyo State. Therefore, chemistry teachers should adopt the integrative teaching style.