EFFECT OF SCAFFOLDING INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGY ON SENIOR SECONDARY STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC PERFORMAMCE IN PHYSICS IN KOGI STATE, NIGERIA.

Abstract

The study investigated effect of scaffolding instructional strategy on students’ academic performance in Physics. Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. The population of the study consisted of 11,091 (5,916 male and 5,175 female) senior secondary school two (SS 11) students who offers physics in Kogi State. The sample size for the study was 240 SSS II students offering Physics in the selected secondary schools. The instrument used for data collection was Physics performance Test (PPT) and Researcher adopted quasi-experimental design for the study. The instruments was face and content validated by three experts. The method of data collection was multi-stage sampling technique and simple random sample technique was used to select a total sample of one hundred and sixty five (165) students from the two secondary schools used for the study. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while the hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significant using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The reliability of the PPT was calculated using Kuder-Richardson (K-R20) method, from which a reliability coefficient of 0.80 was obtained.  The results of the analysis showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the academic performance mean scores of students in physics when exposed to scaffolding and conventional strategies. The findings showed that, there was no significant difference between the academic performance mean scores of male and female students’ taught Physics using scaffolding strategy. Furthermore, the finding revealed that there was no statistically significant interaction effect of instructional strategy and gender on academic performance of students in physics. Based on the findings, it was recommended that Physics teachers should adopt scaffolding instructional strategy in teaching and learning of Physics in order to improve students’ academic performance in physics.