Impact of Laboratory-Based Teaching Strategy on Students’ Attitudes and Mastery of Chemistry: An Experimental Study

Abstract

The study sought to determine the impact of laboratory- based teaching
strategy on students’ attitude and mastery of chemistry concepts. Two schools
were randomly selected and served as experimental and control schools; one
hundred and sixty (160) SS II chemistry students were also randomly selected
from the population. The same students (160) were divided into two. The first
80 was assigned control group. And the second 80 was assigned experimental
group. Pre-test was administered to ascertain the level of compatibility. The
experimental group was taught using laboratory approach while control group
was taught using lecture method. After the treatment, Chemistry Concept
Achievement Test (CCAT) was administered, also Student Attitude
Questionnaire (SAQ) was administered to both experimental and control
groups to ascertain the change of attitude if any. Four research questions and
four hypotheses were raised for the study; the research questions were
answered using the data collected and analyzed through the use of SPSS
(Statistics Package for Social Sciences). T-tests were used to test the four
hypotheses; the tests were designed to determine the impact of laboratorybased teaching strategy on students’ performance. The finding of the study
revealed that students taught using laboratory teaching strategy performed
better and showed positive attitudes more than the students taught using
lecture method. Similarly, there was no significant difference in the mastery
of chemistry concept among the male and female students in the experimental group. The finding further revealed that female students within the experimental group demonstrated higher interest than their male counterparts.
It was also found that laboratory teaching method was more effective and
therefore science teachers should teach students the skills for investigation
rather than telling them facts in chemistry.

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