The effect of inquiry teaching approach in enhancing physics students’ achievement in Ekiti State Secondary Schools, Nigeria

This study was set to verify the effect of inquiry teaching approach and conventional teaching approach on secondary school students’ learning outcomes in Physics, Ekiti State is the focus of this study. This study adopted the non-equivalent pre-test, post-test, experimental design. The population of the study comprised of all Secondary School (SSII) Physics Students, The sample consisted of SSS II students in intact Physics classes in one Local Government Area (LGA).Two research instruments titled Physics Achievement Test (PAT) and Attitude to Physics Teaching and Learning Questionnaire (APTLQ) were used for the purpose of data collection. The PAT contained 20 multiple choice objective test items drawn from past WAEC questions which was used as pre-test to ascertain equivalent ability of the groups, The post-test was carried out to ascertain the effect of the treatment on their academic performance, and the retention test was administered two weeks after the post-test to determine the extent at which they retain Physics concepts. The APTLQ consisted of 20 carefully structured items requesting their attitude towards Physics. It used the 4-point Like-rt scale which assigns 4 – Strongly Agree (SA), 3 – Agree (A). 2 – Disagree (D) while 1 go for Strongly Disagree (SD) respectively. Three research hypotheses were formulated at 0.05 level of significance. Results of the data analysis revealed that, students taught with inquiry teaching approach performed better than those taught with conventional teaching approach in the achievement test and the inquiry teaching approach improved students’ attitude towards Physics than the conventional teaching approach. It equally helps students’ retention ability of Physics concepts.