Abstract:

Despite the efforts made by the Federal Republic of Nigeria in promoting the teaching of physics in secondary schools, physics education still remains deplorable. As a result, many researchers in physics education have worked on new methods of improving students' achievement in physics yet achievement in physics is still on the decline. This study was therefore designed to explore the effect of inquiry role approach (IRA) on the achievement of senior secondary school students in physics. The study employed non equivalent control group quasi-experimental design involving pretest and posttest. Purposive sampling technique was used to select four schools out of a population of sixteen schools in Umuahia North Local Government Area (LGA) of Umuahia Education Zone of Abia State. Two of the schools were randomly assigned to inquiry role approach group and the other two to expository group. Students in both groups were given pretest before instruction and posttest after instruction. A sample of 207 SS11 physics students was used.Two research questions and two null hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. Data was obtained using Physics Concept Test (PCT). Data collected was analyzed using mean and standard deviation for the research questions and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at alpha level of 0.05. The study revealed that students taught with inquiry role approach achieved higher than those taught with expository method. The educational implication of the findings were highligted and it was recommended that classroom teachers should design teaching strategies that can help students overcome their difficulties in learning and interpreting physics concepts. The inquiry role approach (IRA) method of teaching physics should be adopted in in secondary schools and physics teachers should also be trained on the effective use of such method through seminars, workshops and conferences.

Keywords:

Science, Physics, Inquiry role approach and expository approach.