Effect of using Algebraic Method on Secondary School Students’ Performance in Balancing Chemical Equations in Chemistry

Abstract

The study was undertaken to establish the effect of Algebraic Method on Secondary School Students’ performance in balancing chemical equations. The sample of the study consisted of 81 Grade 11 students from two intact classes which were purposively selected but randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The design of the study was pre-test post-test control group quasi-experimental design. The study subjects in the experimental group were taught using Algebraic method, while the control group was taught using the conventional Inspection method over a period of four weeks. Balancing Chemical Equation Performance Test (BCEPT) was used to determine the performance of the two groups after treatment. An independent samples t-test at an alpha level (α) = .05 was conducted to compare the performance of the groups during both the pre-test and post-test. The results of pre-test revealed that there was no significant difference in the performance of both groups. This result implied that the experimental and control groups were equivalent in terms of performance before treatment was administered to the experimental group. However, during post-test there was a statistically significant difference in the mean performance scores of experimental (M = 62.2, SD = 21.8) group and control (M =49.7, SD = 18.0) group t (79) = 2.817, p = .006. The implicature was that students taught balancing chemical equations using Algebraic method performed better than those taught using Inspection method.

Keywords: Algebraic method, Balancing chemical equations, Inspection method, Performance

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-23-08

Publication date: August 31^st 2019