SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION OF CHEMISTRY IN LANGTANG NORTH, PLATEAU STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study investigated secondary school students’ perception of Chemistry in Langtang North, Plateau State. Two research questions and one hypothesis guided the study. The study employed a survey consisted of 1,500 students and 18 schools. The sample comprised 600 senior secondary two students drawn from nine senior secondary schools using proportionate and purposive sampling techniques. The instruments used for data collection were the Chemistry Perception Questionnaire (CPQ) and Chemistry Perception Achievement Inventory (CPAI).  with reliability coefficients of 0.68.and 0.88 respectively. The instruments were validated by three experts. The data collected were analysed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research question while Pearson Product-Moment Correlation coefficient was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that most students selected had negative perception of Chemistry as a subject, with male students having better perception of the subject compared to their female counterparts. There was a significant difference between the mean achievement scores of students that showed positive perception of Chemistry with those that showed negative perception of the subject. Those that showed positive perception had a greater mean achievement score. With respect to gender, there was a slight significant difference in the mean achievement scores of male and female students in favour of male students that showed positive perception in Chemistry. Going by the findings, it was concluded that positive perception in Chemistry enhanced students’ achievement in Chemistry. It was therefore, recommended among others, that Chemistry teachers should create classroom environments that would make their students to have positive perception in the subject.