Abstract:
The type of instructional strategies adopted by students and teachers affect learners’
educational outcomes such as students’test scores or attitude to the topic after
instruction, whether favourably or otherwise. The purpose of this study was to
determine the most effective teaching method for the instruction of ion identification,
during ion-qualitative analysis in Accra Girls’ Senior School by adopting the pretest posttest control true experimental design. Twelve students each from a randomly
selected intact class were randomly assigned to three independent groups. Treatment
lasted for two weeks. Instruments used were achievement test, self-administered
questionnaire (Cronbach reliability=0.84) and an interview schedule. Three hypotheses
were tested at 0.05 level of significance and, data analysed using the one way analysis
of covariance followed by Bonferroni post hoc pairwise comparison test .The
participants were relatively young (M = 17.33, SD = 0.89) and residential status split
between day (50%) and boarding (50%).The respective mean achievement scores for
MBIS, RPKBIS and MLM groups, controlling for covariate were 27.69 (SD=0.61),
20.78 (SD=0.60) and 16.37 (SD=0.62). Pairwise comparison indicated statistically
significant contributions by all three levels of the independent variable. On all five
measures of attitude, students in the mnemonic group scored highest after treatment,
with that of prior knowledge trailing. All twelve students in the mnemonic group
reported an improved performance due to option to select one’s own mnemonic type
for analysis. All three null hypotheses were thus rejected since differences in means
were statistically significant (F(2, 32) = 67.39, P < 0.05) . Overall, the study revealed that
learners’ test scores and attitude to ion qualitative analysis improved by the largest
margin when mnemonic-based instructional method was adopted compared with the
prior-knowledge or modified lecture method of instruction. It is recommended that
curriculum designers include mnemonics for the ion analysis and students should be
encouraged to create and use their own mnemonics especially acronyms for the ion qualitative analysis and periodically study it using “doing practice problems” since
these ranked first among other strategies for effectiveness.
Description:
A dissertation in the Department of Science Education,
Faculty of Science Education, Submitted to the School of
Graduate studies in partial fulfilment
of the requirements for the award of the degree of
Master of Education
(Science Education)
in the University of Education, Winneba.
