ASSESSMENT OF TEACHING EFFECTIVENESS OF COMPETITIVE STRATEGY ON SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS' CHEMISTRYACHIEVEMENT AND RETENTION IN IMO STATE

Abstract

 The study examined teaching effectiveness of competitive strategy on secondary school students' achievement and retention in Chemistry in Imo State. Three research questions were asked, while three hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. Quasi-experimental pre-test, post-test non-equivalent group design was adopted. The population of the study was 94,412 senior students in 296 schools in six education zones in Imo State. A total sample size of 77 (Seventy seven) students participated in the study. There was pretest before the treatment and post test after treatment followed by retention test after two weeks of the study. The instrument used for data collection was Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT). Kuder Richardson 20 (K-R20) statistics were used to establish the reliability index of 0.85. For data collection, the instrument was administered at pre-test and post-test and recorded with the help of the research assistants. For data analysis, the research questions were answered with mean and standard deviation while Analysis of Co[1]variance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings of the study revealed that: the group taught with competitive teaching strategy (CoTS) did better than the other group taught without competitive teaching strategy (CoTS; there was no significant CoTS by gender interaction effects on students' achievement in Chemistry; the mean retention scores of the students exposed to CoTS is greater than the mean retention scores of the students not exposed to the CoTS. It was recommended among others that; Chemistry teachers should employ CoTS in teaching the students since the teaching strategy was effective in improving students' achievement in Chemistry. They should also feel free to choose CoTS since it enhanced students retention of the concepts learnt and since the teaching strategy was not gender biased, thus should be used irrespective of gender.