Cognitive Ability Level and Academic Achievement of Senior Secondary Students in physics in Akwa Ibom North-west district.

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of cognitive ability on academic achievement among senior secondary two students in Physics in Akwa Ibom North -West District. A quasi experimental pre-test post-test non-randomised control group design was adopted for the study. Two research questions and two null hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. Physics Achievement Test (PAT) and Cognitive Ability Test (CAT) instruments were used for data collection from sample size of 91 students. The instruments were validated by three experts. A reliability of 0.73 for PAT and 0.74 for CAT were obtained with split half method using Pearson Product Moment Correlation, which were converted using Spearman Brown formula to have reliability co-efficient of 0.84 and 0.85 respectively. Mean and Standard Deviation were used in answering all the research questions and Analysis of Covariant was used for testing all the hypotheses at 0.05 significant level. The results obtained show that Students with low cognitive ability level performed significantly better than those with high and average cognitive ability level, male students with average cognitive ability level significantly performed better than those with high and low cognitive ability and female with low cognitive ability level performed significantly better than those with high and average cognitive ability level. It is therefore concluded that students academic achievement is not entirely dependent on high cognitive ability level. It was therefore recommended that educational administrators and teachers should use the appropriate teaching techniques to get the best out of students without necessarily considering their cognitive ability levels.