Relative effectiveness of context-based teaching strategy on senior secondary students’ achievement in inorganic chemistry in Rivers State

This study adopted the quasi experimental research design to examine the relative effectiveness of context-based teaching strategy on senior secondary school students’ achievements in inorganic chemistry. The sample consists of 451 SSII chemistry students (224 males and 227 females) drawn from four out of 46 secondary schools in Port Harcourt Zone in Rivers State of Nigeria. Three research questions were answered and three null hypotheses were formulated and tested at the 0.05 level of significance. Stratified random sampling techniques were used in selection and classification of the sample into the experiment and control groups. Inorganic Chemistry Achievement Test (ICAT) was employed in data  collection. The instrument was validated and its reliability coefficient was 0.56. The ICAT instrument was administrated on both the pre-test and post- test. The data obtained from the administration of the instrument was analyzed using mean, standard deviation and analyses of covariance (ANCOVA). The study found out that context –based teaching strategy was significantly better than the expository method in enhancing students’ transfer of learning in inorganic chemistry. The result also showed that there was no significant difference in the mean achievement scores of male and female students taught inorganic chemistry using the same method. In the same vein, the rural students performed significantly better than their urban counterparts taught using the context-based teaching strategy. Based on the findings, recommendations were made among which were that context-based teaching strategy be adopted in teaching and learning of inorganic chemistry in the secondary and tertiary levels of the  educational systems. Keywords : Context-based, teaching strategy, students, achievement, inorganic chemistry