Levels of Possession of Science Process Skills by Final Year Students of Colleges of Education in South-Eastern States of Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the levels of possession of science process skills by final year Nigerian Certificate in Education (NCE) Students in colleges of Education in South-Eastern States of Nigeria. The skills that were assessed were observation, experimentation, measurement, communication, and inference. The research was guided by five research questions and one hypothesis. The research adopted the descriptive survey design. A sample of 200 out of 1000 final year NCE students who studied Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Integrated science in the 2013/2014 academic session were used for the study. The instruments for data collection consisted of a set of practical instructions called science process skills Tests (SPST) and a 28-item Assessment format for science process skills (AFSPS), both instrument were developed by the researcher and validated by 3 experts. AFSPS was an instrument based on 4-point Likert scale of very low, low, high and very high. It was used in rating of the respondent’s levels of possession of the skills. The instruments were face validated and in addition, AFSPS had reliability co-efficient of 0.75 determined by using the Cronbach Alpha statistics. The researcher rated the students’ level of possession of the skills using AFSPS while the students were carrying out the activities using SPST. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions and t-test was used to test the hypothesis. The results indicated among others, high level possession of observation, experimentation and measurement skills and low level possession of communication and inference skills by the respondents and gender-related significant difference in level of possession of the skills. Based on the findings, it was recommended that teacher-trainers should emphasize more on skills acquisition. The Federal and states ministries of Education should employed qualified and trained personnel into the teaching profession; they should also provide adequate and well equipped science Laboratories to facilitate the production of N.C.E. Science Teachers with high level knowledge in science process skills.