The poor secondary school students' academic achievement in Physics as shown in the literature over the past decades has been attributed to poor acquisition of mathematical competencies that can enable them to do well in practical Physics. The need to examine mathematical competencies as determinants of Physics achievement becomes necessary for sustainable education. The study which adopted an ex-post facto research design was carried out in Nsukka education zone of Enugu state during the 2021/2022 academic session. The sample size for the study was 388 senior secondary school I Physics students in 6 randomly sampled single-sex secondary schools. Trained research assistants used interview results to fill the mathematical competency in practical Physics questionnaire (MCPPQ) for each student. Grades spreadsheet was used to collect students' senior secondary certificate examination result in Physics. Cronbach's alpha, which yielded a value of.85 was used to measure the internal consistency reliability of MCPPQ. Beta-weight was used to answer all the research questions while Chi-square statistic was used to test the hypotheses at.05 level of significance and 425 degrees of freedom. The result of the study as perceived by the students indicated that basic practical Physics mathematical operations, graphing skills, generation of readings from equations derived from experimental setup and deductions from the graph in decreasing magnitude positively influenced Physics achievement in external examination. Male and female students' models were similar in terms of path coefficients in the model. Hence, it was recommended that Physics teachers should improve upon students' mathematical competencies in practical Physics to boost their Physics achievement.
Students' consistent poor achievements in physics have been attributed non-availability and non-utilization of ICT resources among others. This study therefore, sought to investigate the Availability and Utilization Status of ICT Resources for Physics Education in Colleges of Education in Enugu State. The area comprised all the 8 accredited public and private Colleges of Education in Enugu State. Census survey research design was adopted for this study. No sampling was involved due to the manageable size of the population (30 physics lecturers: 21 males and 9 females). Six research questions and six null hypotheses guided the study. The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire, developed by the researcher, validated by three experts and trial tested on 7 physics education lecturers. The researcher administered the instrument to the physics lecturers in the public and private Colleges of Education in Enugu State. The responses were collected and Kuder-Richardson's formula-20 (K-R-20) (availability status) and Cronbach alpha (utilization status) statistics were employed to compute the internal consistency estimate of the items. The reliability coefficient obtained was 0.96, which shows that it is reliable. Research questions were answered using mean, and standard deviation. The results of the study indicated that ICT resources are available but fairly utilized by the physics lecturers for teaching and learning Physics in Colleges of Education in Enugu State. It was recommended that lecturers in the Colleges of Education in the state should make up their minds to embrace and harness the new learning systems which ICT tools brought by the emerging technologies for improving teaching and learning outcomes in schools and colleges.
Students' continuous underachievement in physics has underpinned the efficacy of non-cognitive variables like students attitude in physics. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to investigate attitude as predictor of academic achievement of secondary school Physics students in Agbani Education Zone of Enugu State. An Ex-post-facto and correlational survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study was 2752 SS II Physics students' in Agbani education zone from 44 public schools. Purposive sampling procedure was used in selecting 275 Physics students comprising 144 males and 131 females from twelve selected schools in the Zone. Physics Attitude Scale (PAS) adapted from Sumeyye and Oktay (2020) and Students' Achievement Scores obtained from their promotion examination results of 2022/2023 academic session from the schools used were used for data collection. The instrument (PAS) was face validated by three experts and tested for reliability using Cronbach's alpha with the reliability index of 0.82. Data were analyzed using simple regressions. The results indicated that attitude relatively and significantly contributed 39% to the prediction of academic achievement of secondary school Physics. Based on these findings, it was recommended that students should develop positive attitude in physics. Teachers should adopt teaching strategies that would stimulate students positive attitude in teaching Physics.
The problem of poor achievement in Physics in external examinations by students in Ebonyi State, Nigeria warranted the study. The need to use of a cutting-edge individualized instruction rooted in artificial intelligence to measure its potency in curbing the menace of poor achievement becomes necessary. The study examined the effect of self -regulated learning strategy through chat-generative-pretrained-transformer model4 (ChatGPT4) on senior secondary school students' achievement in projectile motion concepts. The study was guided by 2 research questions and 2 hypotheses. The design of the study was none- equivalent control groups quasi-experimental. The population for the study was 10,679 senior secondary school two Physics students in the thirty -one secondary schools for 2017/2018 academic session in Ohaukwu Local Government Area of Ebonyi state, Nigeria. The s ample size for the study was 316 se nior secondary school two Physics students in 4 sampled co-educational secondary schools in Ohaukwu. Projectile motion achievement test (PMAT) was the instrument used for data collection. Kuder-Richardson's formula-20 was used to determine the internal consistency reliability of P MAT. The coefficient was 0.88. Mean and standard deviations were used in answering the research questions while 2× 2 analysis of covariance was used to test the hypotheses at.05 level of significance. The result of the study showed that the students who learnt Physics using self- regulated individualized learning s trategy: ChatGPT model4 achieved better than th eir counterparts, who learnt Projectile motion using expository method. The result of the study also showed that there was no significant difference between the mean achievement scores of male and female students who learnt projectile motion concepts using ChatGPT model4. Hence, it was recommended that Physics students should use ChatGPT model 4 which is gender-friendly to enhance their self-learning in Physics concepts.
This study investigated the effect of Reciprocal peer tutoring (RPT) strategy on senior secondary school students' achievement in Physics in Enugu Education Zone, Enugu State. The influence of gender on the achievement of students was explored. The study adopted a pretest, posttest, non -equivalent control group quasi -experimental research design. The sample for the study comprised of 167 Senior Secondary One Physics stude nts selected using the purposive sampling from two co -educational schools located within the education zone. Data were collected using Physics Achievement Test constructed by the researchers and validated by experts in measurement and evaluation to ascerta in the validity of the instrument. The reliability of the test was ascertained using the Kuder - Richardson (K -R) 20 formula and a reliability coefficient of 0.76 was obtained. Data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation and analysis of covariance at 0.05 probability level. Result of the study indicated that students taught Physics using Reciprocal peer tutoring strategy performed better than their counterparts taught Physics using the lecture method. Based on these findings, it was recommended that RPT strategy should be adopted by Physics teachers at secondary school level in order to enhance students' academic achievement.
The dearth of studies on the predictive power o f non-cognitive variables like academic self-regulation and locus of control as predictors of academic achievement of Physics students in the Department of Science Education, Technology, Enugu State, Nigeria necessitated the study. Three null hypotheses tested at.05 level of significance guided the study. An ex-post-facto research design was adopted for the study. Purposive sampling procedure was used in selecting 139 Physics Education students comprising 75 males and 64 fe males from Physics programme, Department of Science Education. Three instruments were used for data collections. Academic self - regulation scale was adapted from Akhatar and Mahmood (2013). A cademic locus of control scale was adapted from Trice (1985) and Physics academic Achievement sc ores were extracted from the students' semester examination of 2020/2021 academic session, conducted by the university, (ESUT). The reliability of the instruments were tested using Cronbach's alpha which yielded indices of 0.87and 0.76 respectively. Data were analyzed using multiple regression. The results indicated that academic self-regulation and locus of control relatively and jointly contributed significantly to the prediction of academic achievement of Physics Ed ucation students. There was no variati on in relative and joint prediction of achievement in Physics based on gender. Based on the findings, it was recommended that lecturers should adopt teaching strategies that should stimulate Physics students' gender-friendly academic self -regulation and locus of con trol in order to increase students' achievement in Physics.
The poor state of secondary school students' achievement relative to policy expectation in Physics triggered the study. At the level of instrument quality, the scoring pattern in West African Senior School Certificate Examination's (WASSCE) Physics essay m arking scheme, difficulty -parameter level of the items and differential item functioning were sought. Instrumentation research design was adopted. One hundred and sixty senior secondary III Physics students consisting of 63 female and 97 male students form ed the sample. The 2018 WASSCE Physics essay with its marking scheme formed the instrument used to collect data. The internal consistency reliability of the instrument sought using Kuder-Richardson's formula 21 had value of 0.81. Three research questions and one null hypothesis guided the study. Research questions were answered using frequencies, mean infit/outfit statistic, mean item difficulty and mean standard error. The null hypothesis was tested at.05 level of significance using Mantel -Haenszel's Chi-square probability value. The result indicated that fractional-polarization scoring was adopted for two items. 25 in 28 items fit the partial credit model. The items were moderately difficult and did not exhibit gender-based differential item functioning. It is recommended that West African Examinations Council should remove fractional -dichotomization scoring and breakup marks allocated to an item into more than two groups for all items in future Physics essay marking scheme.
