EFFECT OF PHET STRATEGY ON SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS' ACHIEVEMENT IN PHYSICS IN FEDERAL CAPITAL TERRITORY, ABUJA

Abstract

The study investigated the effect of PHET strategy on senior secondary school students' achievement in Physics in Abuja Municipal Area Council, Abuja. The study used quasi-experimental research design involving the non-randomized pretest, posttest, control group design. The population of the study comprised 6,638 SS II Physics students from 15 public secondary schools in Abuja Municipal Area Council, Abuja. The sample for this study consisted of 195 SS II Physics students from two senior secondary schools in Abuja Municipal Area Council. Data were collected using Physics Achievement Test (PAT). The reliability coefficients of 0.88 was obtained for PAT through Kuder-Richardson 21 method. Descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation was used to answer the research questions while null hypotheses were tested using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) at 0.05 alpha level of significance. The findings revealed that students taught Physics using PhET simulation strategy achieved significantly higher scores compared to students taught using conventional method. The ANCOVA analysis confirmed this difference as highly significant, with an extremely large effect size suggesting that approximately 94.0% of the variance in posttest achievement scores could be explained by the teaching method. Based on outcomes of the findings, the study recommended among others that the Federal Ministry of Education and Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) should integrate PhET simulation strategy into the national Physics curriculum for senior secondary schools.