A study of the nature of incidental physical science knowledge possessed by elementary school children in Western State of Nigeria

Abstract

This study was designed to examine the amount of incidental physical science knowledge possessed by fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students in elementary schools in Western State of Nigeria, and to determine what relationship exists between the amount of such knowledge and the pupils' performance on science-related Piagetian tasks. The pupils were ,tested with the Physical Science Knowledge Test and numerous Piagetian tasks. The responses of the pupils were then subjected to an iten-by-item analysis and to the t-test, analysis of variance, and correlational analysis. Some of the results of this study were: there was a significant difference between the amount of incidental science knowledge possessed by urban school children and that possessed by their non-urban counterparts; the performances on the Piagetian tasks were age-dependent, with the older children performing better than the younger children; and a significant positive correlation was found between the amount of incidental science knowledge possessed by sclh.N1 children of each grade of study and their performance on the Piagetian tasks. (Author/MLH) *********************************************************************** * Documents acquired by ERIC include many informal unpublished * * materials not available from other sources. ERIC makes every effort * * to obtain the best copy available. Nevertheless, items of marginal * * reproducibility are often encountered and this affects the quality * * of the microfiche and hardcopy reproductions ERIC makes available * * via the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS). EDRS is not * * responsible for the quality of the original document. Reproductions * * supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original. * ***********************************************************************