Classroom Factors that Affects the Performance of Integrated Science Students at the Junior High School in the Kumasi Metropolis of Ghana

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to find out the opinions of public and private Junior High School science teachers on the classroom factors that affect performance of students in integrated science in public and private junior high schools in the Kumasi metropolis. The study used descriptive survey designed. The sampling procedure employed for the study was both random and purposive sampling. While the integrated science teachers were purposively sampled due to their subject they teach, the students were randomly selected. Questionnaire and interview were used for data collection. It was found out that integrated science teachers to be aware that classroom factors such as teacher-student relationship, availability of science resource materials, teaching methods employed by teachers, class size, supervision and physical infrastructure are likely to affect performance of students in integrated science at the J.H.S. level. Again, the findings revealed that the selected public schools within the Kumasi metropolis were well resourced with the following: adequate physical infrastructure, adequate science resource materials, adequate science text books and adequate trained science teachers as against their private school counterparts with inadequate physical infrastructure, inadequate science resource materials, inadequate science text books and few trained science teachers. It was recommended that effective supervision must be performed regularly by heads of schools during integrated science lessons. The heads of the public JHS especially, those in the Kumasi metropolis must be made to regularly ensure that their science teachers teach very well during integrated science lessons.

Keywords: Laboratory, Performance, Classroom factors