The effect of class-wide peer tutoring in improving students’ science concept development in some selected topics in chemistry in Senior High School

Abstract

This study evaluated the effect of teacher interventions on students‟ science concept development. The study established the role of teacher interventions in students‟ science concept development using class-wide peer tutoring and the extent of students‟ science concept development after the intervention. In this study the Researcher taught using analogy, predict observe and explain where students‟ behaviour were observed and feedbacks provided by the peer tutors to their tutees were assessed. The study identified students‟ feedback to the questions asked during peer tutoring sessions. The progress of students‟ performance was monitored by the Researcher during the tutoring sessions with the implementation of class-wide peer tutoring instructional intervention. The extent of the intervention strategy on students‟ science concept development was determined. The study employed an action research strategy for data collection. Class-wide peer tutoring instructional strategy was employed in teaching five lessons during the intervention period. The strategy was used to teach 30 Form 2 chemistry students of the Kpando Senior High School in the Kpando Municipality of Volta Region of Ghana. This study used teaching and assessment of the learning outcome as the main instrument for data collection. The findings were that student-teacher and student-student interactions increasingly improved. A total of 105 observations were made during the peer tutoring time. 25(83.3%) of the peer tutors were observed praising their tutees for correct responses whiles 23(76.7%) of the tutors awarded marks to correct responses. Beside, students‟ participation in class-wide peer tutoring increased as activity oriented teaching method was used. Finally, on the basis of the results obtained in this study, it is concluded that more topics in science can be taught using class-wide peer tutoring for effective concept development in science.