GUIDED AND OPEN INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING APPROACHES ON STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN PHYSICS IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN SUBA SOUTH SUB-COUNTY, KENYA

Abstract

Physics as a science is so crucial for technological advancement and innovation in the 21st century. It helps students understand how the concepts of matter and energy are related under the fields of mechanics, electricity and magnetism, waves, optics, and thermodynamics. Despite the significance of physics in innovations and advancements in technology, its enrollment and performance in secondary schools and tertiary levels have been alarming. Students have consistently recorded low achievements in external tests such as the KCSE. This low achievement has been linked to conventional teaching methods, which are examination-oriented and teacher-centered. As a result, educational policies have resolved on learner-centered instructional strategies such as Inquiry-Based Learning. Several studies that have focused on Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) have shown that it influences students’ academic achievements positively, especially in STEM disciplines. However, as far as the literature search for the current study was done, limited studies in Kenya addressed the effect of guided and open approaches to IBL on students’ achievement in Physics. This study, therefore, embarked on investigating the effect of guided and open approaches to inquiry on students’ achievement in Physics among students in Kenyan public schools. Constructivist and constructionism learning theories guided the study. The specific objectives of this study were: to investigate the effect of guided and open inquiry on students’ performance in physics projects, to investigate the effects guided and open inquiry have on students’ physics achievement scores, to determine the comparative effect of guided and open inquiry in enhancing students’ physics achievement scores and project performance, and to explore the challenges secondary school teachers face in the implementation of IBL. The study adopted convergent parallel mixed methods research, where Solomon’s Four quasi-experimental design was used to collect the quantitative data, while questionnaires were used to collect qualitative data. The target population for the study was 3312 form three students enrolled in the public secondary schools in the subcounty, together with 637 teachers in the schools. Purposive, stratified, and simple random sampling techniques along with Cochran’s formula, were used to sample 345 students to represent the target population. A total of 176 students and 6 teachers became the respondents who took part in the study. Analytic rubric, physics achievement test, and teachers’ questionnaire were the data collection instruments that were used for data collection. Descriptive statistics, including mean, standard deviations, and frequencies, were used to describe the nature of the students’ responses. Inferential statistics that included independent sample t-tests, paired sample statistics, Wilcoxon Signed-Rank, Mann-Whitney U-test and ANCOVA were used to draw conclusions of the study. SPSS version 25 was used to aid the analysis process. All the hypotheses were tested at a significance level of 0.05. The results showed that both guided and open approaches to inquiry had an improvement effect on both students’ physics achievement scores and project performance, though guided inquiry proved to be a stronger predictor to the achievement scores and the project performance than open inquiry did. In addition, the outstanding challenge teachers agreed upon were poor internet connectivity and the digital divide. The researcher recommended the adoption of IBL for secondary physics instruction.