ABSTRACT

The study investigated the effects of guided discovery and demonstration teaching methods on students’ academic achievement and retention in practical chemistry in Unity Schools in South East Nigeria. It was guided by eight research questions and eight hypotheses. The study adopted quasi-experimental non-equivalent, pre-test, post-test and delayed post-test design. Multistage sampling technique was used to select 226 senior secondary two (SS 2) Chemistry students from two Coeducational Unity Schools out of a population of 2135 students from the twelve Unity Schools in the South East. The instruments for data collection were the Practical Chemistry Achievement Test (PCAT, r = 0.77) and Practical Chemistry Evaluation Exercise (PCEE1, R = 0.85 and PCEE2, r= 0.80) which  were both adopted from the West African Examination Council (WAEC) Past questions and also validated by three experts; two in Chemistry Education and one in measurement and Evaluation, all from the Department of Science Education in Michael Okpara Universality of Agriculture. The data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation for research questions, while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test++ the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance.  Findings revealed, among others that the demonstration teaching method enhanced the students’ academic achievement and retention most, followed by the guided discovery method while the lecture method, which was used as the control had the least effect.  It was also found out that there was no significant difference in the mean achievement  and mean retention scores of both male and female students in Unity Schools when taught practical Chemistry with the demonstration method. There was also no significant difference in the mean achievement scores of male and female Unity Schools Students taught practical Chemistry using the guided discovery method but the female Students showed a significantly higher mean retention scores than their male counterparts in this guided discovery method.  There was also no significant interaction effect of teaching methods and gender on students’ academic achievement in Practical Chemistry in Unity Schools but there was a significant interaction effect of teaching methods and gender on Unity schools students’ retention. It was therefore recommended among others that the demonstration teaching method should be used by teachers in teaching practical Chemistry in Unity Schools and that workshops should be  organized regularly by the Federal and State Ministries of Education for Chemistry teachers to acquaint  them with modern process skills and instructional materials needed for effective  lessons demonstration during practical Chemistry lessons.