Learning Mole Concept with PALS: An Intervention for Working Students in a Night School

Jeniffer C Taborada,Joje Mar P Sanchez

doi:10.26534/kimika.v31i1.11-19

Abstract

A quasi-experimental study was done in order to investigate the effectiveness of Peer-Assisted Learning Strategy (PALS) as an intervention in learning Mole Concept for the ninth grade-working students in a night school in Cebu City, Philippines. Study findings revealed that students exposed to conventional lecture method (CLM) (N=15) had Below Average performance in the pre/posttests, and those exposed to PALS (N=15) had Below Average performance in the pretest and Average performance in the posttest. Both groups had significant mean improvement before and after exposure to CLM (t=5.07, p=.000) and PALS (t=10.37, p=.000), indicating that both lectures and peer tutoring are essential in teaching-learning process. The study also found out that those exposed to PALS (t=4.24, p=.000) had significantly greater improvement than those exposed to CLM. Moreover, sex, age, civil status and number of people in the house were not associated with their performance in Chemistry, implying that these profiles do not affect the tutor-tutee relationship. The study concluded that PALS manifested a more enhanced performance among the working students in Chemistry.

Highlights

Science is frequently perceived to be of great importance because of its link to technology and industry, which are areas with high priority for development
Many of the Filipino students are not attaining functional literacy to keep pace or meet the challenges of the rapidly changing world. This is evident in the unsatisfactory results revealed in the 2003 Trends in Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS) and 2019 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) that proved that vast majority of Filipino students performed way below the levels of most students from other countries in international tests
The use of Peer-Assisted Learning Strategy was an effective intervention for the ninth grade working students of a night school as seen in the change of students’ qualitative performance from Below Average to Average, significant improvement of students’ performance levels after the intervention, and the significantly higher mean gain among the students than those who were exposed to convention method

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Science is frequently perceived to be of great importance because of its link to technology and industry, which are areas with high priority for development. As such, it is included as a core subject in both elementary and secondary curricula to make the youth achieve a degree of “scientific learning”. Many of the Filipino students are not attaining functional literacy to keep pace or meet the challenges of the rapidly changing world This is evident in the unsatisfactory results revealed in the 2003 Trends in Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS) and 2019 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) that proved that vast majority of Filipino students performed way below the levels of most students from other countries in international tests

12 Learning Mole Concept with PALS

METHODS

Hypothetical mean

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS