IDENTIFICATION OF DIFFICULT PHYSICS PROCESS SKILLS IN PHYSICS PRACTICAL ACTIVITIES AMONG SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL PHYSICS STUDENTS IN AWKA EDUCATION ZONE

Abstract

The study was  aimed  at  the  identification  of  difficult physics process  skills in  Physics  Practical  Activities  among secondary school  Physics  students. The sample  was  made  up  of  162 physics  students  from  6  secondary  s chools  in  Awka  education zon e  of  Anambra  State. The design for the study w as a descriptive survey. The Physics P r o c e s s S k ills i n v e s t ig a t e d w e r e : c o n t r olli n g o f v a r i a bl e s, o b s e r v a t io n, c o n d u c t of experiment, measurement. Communication, data analysis and inference. The  instrument  for  data  collection  was  a Physics Process  Skill Rating Scale (PPSRS)  designed  by the  researcher  and  validated  by physics  educators in  Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu  University, Uli, Anambra  State  and  phy sics   teachers  teaching the  SS 3  Physics  students  in  Awka education  zone. Test – retest  method was  used  to  establish  the  stability  of the  instrument using  Pearson  product  moment  correlation  and  the  index  of  stability  was  0.68 . The estimate of inter nal co nsistency using crombach alpha was 0.70. Physics  students’  grades  for  one  session  were used  to  classify  them  as  high  and  low  ability. Three research questions and two hypoth eses guided the study.  Data collected was analy zed using mean, stand ard deviation and z - t est. The  study  revealed  that of  the  seven  skills  investigated,  physics  students  had  difficulty  in the  acquisition of  six  of  the  skills.  The findings  also  revealed  that  female  and  low  ability Physics  students w ere  the  most affected.  Among  others, it  was  recommended  that  p hysics  teachers  should  start  practical  activities  from  SS1.  In addition, Physics  teachers  should  be  retrained  by  exposing  them  to  seminars,  workshops  and  con ferences  on  Physics  Process skills. Physics  teachers  should  also be  sensitized  on  gender  issues  in physics .