Abstract

Agboola Omowunmi Sola* and Oloyede Ezekiel Ojo

This study assessed and compared the relative effectiveness of three methods for teaching and conducting experiments in separation of mixtures in chemistry. A pre-test, post–test experimental design with a control group was used. Two hundred and thirty three randomly selected Senior Secondary School I (SSS I) chemistry students were drawn from four Local Governments Areas of Osun State, Nigeria. The research instruments developed were a twenty-five item supply/select response questions used for the pre-test and post-test tagged Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT). Students were divided into three experimental and one control groups. Students in the three experimental groups were subjected to treatment using project, inquiry or lecture-demonstration method respectively while students in the control group were taught using the traditional method of teaching. The pre-test was administered to students in all the four groups before teaching commenced and after the teaching and the experiment, a post-test was then administered. The data was analyzed using t-test analysis, one way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Scheffe post–hoc analysis. The results of ANOVA of the difference in the scores of the posttest of the project, inquiry, lecture-demonstration methods and control group showed a significant difference between the groups (Fc= 327.258 > Ft = 2.60 at þ < 0.05, df = (3,229)). Students taught with project method performed better in the Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT) than the students taught with lecture-demonstration method (tc = 5.60 > tt = 1.64 at þ < 0.05, df = 127), while those students taught with the lecture-demonstration method performed better than those taught with inquiry method (tc = 6.39 > tt = 1.64 at þ tt = 1.64 at þ < 0.05, df = 133). The study concluded that the project method enhanced better performance in Chemistry practical better than either inquiry or lecture-demonstration method.