Conceptual Change Pedagogy and Its Effects On Students’ Cognitive Achievement and Interest in Biology

Abstract

This study investigated the efficacy of conceptual change Pedagogy on students' cognitive achievement and interest in biology. Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. A non-equivalent, pretestpost-test quasi experimental design was employed. Four secondary schools were randomly selected in Calabar Municipality and Calabar south Local Government Areas, Cross River State. Two schools were randomly assigned to either experimental or control group. The experimental group students were exposed to the use of the conceptual change pedagogy while the control group students were exposed to the conventional instructional method. In each selected school, one intact arm of SSII class was randomly selected for participation as experimental or control group. Two hundred and seventy-two SSII biology students from the four secondary schools constituted the sample size. A sample note of lesson for effective teaching using conceptual change pedagogy was developed by the researchers. Two researcher-developed instruments named Biology Achievement Test (BAT) and Biology Interest Inventory (BII) were used for data collection. Their validity and their reliability indices were established using Cronbach alpha. Mean scores and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses. The result revealed that students taught biology using the conceptual change pedagogy outperformed that taught biology using conventional method. The students in the experimental group were more interested in the subject as compared to their counterparts in the control group because they were able to deal with their misconceptions about the concepts.

Addressing Pre-Service Teachers’ Misconceptions and Promoting Conceptual Understanding Through the Conceptual Change Model

“…Congruent with other results in the literature (Nadelson et al, 2018;Potvin et al, 2020), the results of this research also showed that teaching with the conceptual change model increased conceptual understanding and minimized misconceptions (Akbaş & Gençtürk, 2011;Heddy et al, 2018). However, most of the research available in the literature has been done with students in kindergarten to high school settings (Amponsah & Ochonogor, 2018;Ekon & Edem, 2018;Gates, 2010;McLure et. al., 2020;Santyasa et al, 2018) or on students enrolled in science-major programs at the university (Arthurs, 2019;Arthurs et.…”

How CCDA instrument analyzed science pre-service teachers’ prior knowledge?

“…This CDA approach provides important information related to which concepts need to be studied more deeply and which concepts can be passed according to student needs (Galvin & Simmie, 2015). This departs from the belief that students have their understanding of various kinds of concepts, both from previous levels of education and from experiences possessed by students (Ekon & Edem, 2018;Pekel, 2019). Of course, it is expected that the understanding possessed by students is the correct understanding of the concept, but it does not rule out misconceptions.…”

Effectiveness of STEM problem-based learning on the achievement of biology among secondary school students in Nigeria

“…Studies focusing on understanding of diffusion and osmosis confirmed that students show a considerable number of misconceptions and difficulties that are resistant to change by traditional teaching methods (Abdullahi, et al, 2021;Ekon & Edem, 2018;Obochi, 2021). Ekon & Edem (2018) pointed many misconceptions about concentration and tonicity and the influence of life forces on diffusion and osmosis among biology students.…”

“…Studies focusing on understanding of diffusion and osmosis confirmed that students show a considerable number of misconceptions and difficulties that are resistant to change by traditional teaching methods (Abdullahi, et al, 2021;Ekon & Edem, 2018;Obochi, 2021). Ekon & Edem (2018) pointed many misconceptions about concentration and tonicity and the influence of life forces on diffusion and osmosis among biology students. Dogru &Özsevgeç (2018), andIhemedu (2018) conducted a study on the secondary school biology students on their perceived difficulty of isolated biology topics and reported that osmosis and water potential were regarded by students as being among the most difficult biological concepts to understand.…”