Abstract:

Chemistry education is facing a challenge of poor teaching-learning outcome due to the prevailing learning barriers in chemistry. Academicians’ worldwide advocated student centred teaching methodology for improving teaching-learning outcome in chemistry. Most of these works advocated the use of appropriate technology to impart student centred teaching process. In South Africa, finance and resources were found to be very limited, especially in rural community schools. This work brought an alternative method that could encourage student centred teaching process even if there is a shortage of finance and resources. The no fee public schools from the Nkomazi municipal area are supposed to comprise the population for this proposed quantitative study. A conveniently selected sample group was selected to administer the lesson from the targeted population group. A five-phase learning cycle was proposed to teach ionic bonding for the purpose of this study. A pre-test administered to both the sample and the control group that determined the level of pre-knowledge of the students’ about different chemistry content as well as alternate concepts. A post intervention test was administered to collect the data on the performances (teaching-learning outcome of teaching the content) for both the sample and the control groups. Data was analysed quantitatively. The results showed that experimental group performed better than the control group in terms of conceptual understanding and application skill of the content. The results of the introduced lesson strategy in classrooms to teach ionic bond will provided us with a direction towards a better student-centred teaching process even if there exists a deficiency of resources.

Chemistry education is facing a challenge of poor teaching-learning outcome due to the prevailing learning barriers in chemistry. Academicians’ worldwide advocated student centred teaching methodology for improving teaching-learning outcome in chemistry. Most of these works advocated the use of appropriate technology to impart student centred teaching process. In South Africa, finance and resources were found to be very limited, especially in rural community schools. This work brought an alternative method that could encourage student centred teaching process even if there is a shortage of finance and resources. Sixty one public high schools from five schools circuits under the Nkomazi municipal area to be the population for this study. The no fee public schools from the Nkomazi municipal area are supposed to comprise the sample for this proposed quantitative mixed research-study. A conveniently selected sample group was studied as a pilot to administer the lesson from the targeted population group. A five-phased learning cycle was proposed to teach ionic bonding for the purpose of this study. In the proposed study pre-test will be administered to both the sample and the control group that could determine the level of pre-knowledge of the students’ about atom, periodic table and bonding as well as alternate concepts. A post intervention test based on BRI to be administered to collect the data on the performances (teaching-learning outcome of teaching the content) for both the sample and the control groups. These data to be analysed quantitatively and be compared with the contextual issue’s using appropriate qualitative tools. This will determine how far the proposed mixed context based teaching method help improving the chemistry teaching-learning outcome. In the preliminary study no pre-test or post-test tools were used. Researcher used the tools (Examination question papers) supplied by the department that was used to measure the subject teaching-learning outcome at the end of every term for the year. These question papers are standard and used for all schools simultaneously. Hence these papers could be considered as a valid and reliable tool for measuring teaching-learning outcome for chemistry along with other questions from physics. The preliminary results showed that experimental group performed better over a period of time in terms of their performances in term end examinations. This is what encouraged the researcher to bring forward a proposal to carry out the same study in a structured and more controlled and scientific way to determine the actual outcome of the developed mixed context based teaching methodology. The results of the introduced lesson strategy in classrooms to teach ionic bond will provide us with a direction towards a better student-centred teaching process even if there exists a deficiency of resources.

Keywords:

chemistry education, outcome, student centred teaching