Abstract
This study examined effects of material and non-material reinforcers on academic performance of Abia State Senior Secondary Schools girls on health science. As a quasi-experimental study, 120 SS II students were selected from six secondary schools located in the three Educational zones of the state. From each zone, two schools were selected using stratified random sampling. The 240 students were divided into three groups of 80 students each. That is, 80 to the material reinforcer group, 80 to the non-material reinforcer and 80 to the control group. The lessons developed on health science were content validated and the reliability was established at 0.86 coefficient index. The students in the material reinforcer, non-material reinforcer and control group were taught differently according to the specification of the study. Before the treatment, pre-test were conducted and after the teaching exercises, post-test were conducted. The results of the tests calculations based on ANOVA, and z-test indicated that three hypotheses were rejected and one was accepted. Some of these findings were made; that the mean scores of students materially reinforced and students that were non-materially reinforced differ significantly, meaning that the former had higher achievement score more than the later and the mean scores of students taught using material reinforcement differ significantly from the control group. Based on the findings and conclusions, some recommendations made; to ensure good improvement in the students’ performance in health science, teachers should always consider it necessary to use material reinforcers in teaching their students and that government should always provide these tangible materials for the teachers to use in teaching health science.
Highlights
The spate of poor performance of Nigerian students in especially the sciences has remained a source of worry to government and other stakeholders in education. Adaji (2005) noted that failure rates in both school and public examinations have been distressingly high and students’ performance at every level of education has continued to be low
That the use of material reinforcers in teaching health science produced the best performance in the female students
The use of non-material reinforcers improved the performance of female students in health science
Summary
The spate of poor performance of Nigerian students in especially the sciences has remained a source of worry to government and other stakeholders in education. Adaji (2005) noted that failure rates in both school and public examinations have been distressingly high and students’ performance at every level of education has continued to be low. Adaji (2005) noted that failure rates in both school and public examinations have been distressingly high and students’ performance at every level of education has continued to be low. This downward trend in the performance of students especially girls is blamed on the teachers’ in appropriate teaching methods and their inability to use reinforcement to encourage their students’ performance. Reinforcement may be positive reinforcement when there is increase in the future frequency of behaviour due to the addition of a stimulus (reinforcer) following a response. While negative reinforcement increases the future frequency of a behaviour
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