Title:
OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN AND STUDENT ACADEMIC ENGAGEMENT AS CORRELATES OF STUDENTS' ACHIEVEMENT IN CHEMISTRY IN RIVERS STATE

Authors:
Pepple Tamunosisi Furo Ph.D and Jane Randy Abbey

Abstract:
The persistent poor performance of students in chemistry especially in external examinations such as WASSCE and NECO has been o (" great concern to parents, government and other stakeholders in education, and this is an indicator of students" poor acquisition of the necessary knowledge in chemistry. This could also be attributed to lack of opportunities to learn and poor student engagement in the school which tends to have affected the students' academic performance as well as their chances of gaining admission into Science. Technology and Mathematics (STM) related courses in the higher institutions. Hence, this study investigated the effect of opportunity to learn and student academic engagement on students" achievement in chemistry in Rivers State. The study adopted the correlational design of survey type. The population consisted of all the senior secondary school three (SSS 3) chemistry students in Rivers State. A sample size of 1000 respondents was selected using the simple random sampling technique. Three instruments were used for data collection which include, Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT) with 0.80 reliability coefficient using KR-20, Students' Opportunity To Learn Questionnaire (SOTLQ) and Student Academic Engagement Questionnaire (SAEQ) with 0.94 and 0.89 reliability coefficients respectively using Cronbach Alpha. Four research questions guided the study. Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Multiple Regression Analysis were employed for the data analysis. Result showed that opportunity to learn (r - 0.044) and student academic engagement (r = 0.034) have positive but weak correlation with students' achievement in chemistry. Results also showed that opportunity to learn (r = 0.044, P > 0.05) and student academic achievement (r - 0.034, P > 0.05) do not significantly correlate with students achievement in Chemistry. Two predictor variables jointly accounted for 0.4% of the total variance in students' achievement in Chemistry.

Keywords:
Achievement, Chemistry, Correlates and Opportunity to learn

DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.37500/IJESSR.2020.3038