Advance Organisers and Secondary School Students’ Performance in Redox Reactions

Abstract

Students’ performance in chemistry examinations in Nigerian secondary schools is consistently low. Factors attributed to students' low performance include students' interest in the subject, abstract and complex nature of the concepts, and dominant use of teacher-centered methods. Thus, the need for a novel strategy that has the potential to improve students' interest and present chemistry concepts more explicitly. This study aimed to examine the use of a method that incorporated advance organizers in teaching the redox reaction concept at the secondary school level. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design with pre and post-test control groups. The study targeted a population of 11,560 secondary school students in the Dutsin-Ma Educational zone, from which a sample of 138 form five science students were selected using a stratified sampling technique and randomly assigned into experimental and control groups. Data was collected using Redox Reaction Performance Test (RRPT) before and after the treatment that lasted eight weeks. The data was analyzed using means, standard deviations, and t-tests. Findings show that the method incorporated with advance organizers significantly affects the learning of redox reactions. Students in the experimental group achieved higher scores than those in the control group and there was no significant difference in performance between male and female in the experimental group. Thus, chemistry teachers and other stakeholders in science education were encouraged to adopt and strengthen the use of advance organizers in teaching science subjects in general and chemistry in particular.