Teaching Approaches and Students' Attitudes and its Correlation to their Performance in Physics

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Physics subject is measured as the most problematic area within the field of science. Teaching of Physics in secondary schools traditionally attracts fewer learners than other field of science subjects. This prompted the researcher to examine high school students' attitudes towards the subject of Physics, the teaching and learning of Physics, and the approaches in teaching the subject.

METHODS

A teacher-made test was used to determine the performance of the respondents in Physics. An attitude test inventory was used to determine the level of attitude of the respondents in Physics. The different approaches used in this research study were the Conceptual, Experimental, Multi-Modal and Mathematical Approach. In analyzing the data, statistical tools were used. Among these tools are frequency distribution, Mean, Mean Percent Score (MPS) and Analysis of Variance.

RESULTS

The highlights of the study are as follows: 1) The attitude level of respondents towards Physics is generally low. 2) The performance of respondents varies in each group when they are clustered according to attitude towards Physics. 3) The gained scores of the respondents when they are grouped according to attitude showed that those with "very low" attitude gained the highest Mean Percentage Score, followed by those with "very high" attitude towards Physics, then with the respondents having "low" attitude towards the subject. 4) The gained-scores of the respondents when they are grouped according approaches used implies that those exposed to multi-modal approach of teaching gained the highest Mean Percentage Score, followed by those respondents exposed with conceptual approach then with those taught with mathematical approach. The lowest gained score was obtained by the respondents exposed with experimental approach. 5) There is a significant relationship between gained scores and attitude towards Physics by the respondents across approaches.

DISCUSSIONS

Those respondents with "low" attitude towards Physics eventually changed their attitude and performed better as the multi-modal approach was used. On the contrary, those with "high" and "very high" attitude towards the subject performed lower when exposed to the conceptual, mathematical and experimental approaches.