Abstract:

The study investigated the effects of concept mapping and peer tutoring instructional strategies on learning outcomes of Osun State Senior Secondary School and ascertained the differential performance of male and female students in chemistry with a view of improving student performance in chemistry.

The study adopted a non-equivalent pretest, posttest control quasi-experimental design. A total of one hundred and five senior secondary school II students in intact classes were chosen from three schools in Ife Central Local Government Area of Osun State using purposive random sampling. The ages of the students ranged between 14-17 years. Data were collected using a 30- item multiple choice Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT), 14-item Questionnaire on Attitudes of Students Towards the use of Concept Mapping Instructional Strategy in Teaching Chemistry (QASCPISTC) and 14-item Questionaire on Attitudes of Students Towards the use of Peer Tutoring Instructional Strategy in Teaching Chemistry (QASTPISTC) and instructional notes on periodic chemistry, organic chemistry and volumetric analysis. Students were assigned to two treatment groups and a control group. Four hypotheses were generated and tested which were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The data obtained were analysed using descriptive statistics, t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA). Multiple Classification Analysis (MCA) was used to examine the magnitude of the differences among the various groups while post-hoc test was used to determine the significance main effects.

There was no significant difference in students performance when concept mapping and peer tutoring instructional strategies were used to teach chemistry (tc = 1.14 > tt = 0.0162 at p < 0.05). There was significant difference in the retention ability of students exposed to concept mapping and peer tutoring instructional strategies and conventional teaching method (F = 96.901 at p < 0.05). There was no significant difference in the performance of male and female students in the three groups (F = 1.14 at p < 0.05). This means that there were no sex influences on students’ performance when concept mapping and peer tutoring instructional strategies and conventional methods were used for instruction. There was no significant difference in the attitudes of students exposed to concept mapping and peer tutoring instructional strategies (tc = 0.703 > 0.220 at p < 0.05). This showed that concept mapping and peer tutoring had positive attitudes towards the instructional strategies. The overall results showed that concept mapping instructional strategy significantly improved students’ performance in chemistry better than the peer tutoring instructional strategy, while peer tutoring instructional strategy also significantly improved students’ performance better than the conventional method.
The study concluded that concept mapping promoted better achievement and productivity than the peer tutoring and conventional method. It was recommended that concept mapping strategy should be use to teach chemistry in Nigerian Senior Secondary Schools.

Keywords:

Peer tutoring, concept mapping, chemistry, conventional methods of teaching.