Effects of Peer-Assisted Learning on Nigerian Secondary School Students' Achievement in Electrochemistry

The study compared the effects of peer-assisted learning method (PALM) and Conventional Lecture method (CLM) on Nigerian secondary school students’ achievement in electrochemistry. Two research questions and two null hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance guided the study. The study employed a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest non-equivalent control group. The population of the study comprised all 5057 Senior Secondary two (SS 2) chemistry students in Awka education zone of Anambra state, Nigeria. A sample size of 110 SS 2 chemistry students were selected and used for the study. A 50-item instrument Electrochemistry Achievement Test (EAT) was used for data collection. The instrument was face validated and reliability coefficient of 0.87 was obtained for EAT using Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 (KR-20). Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of this study revealed that students taught using PALM achieved significantly higher mean scores than those taught using CLM (p ˂ .05). The study also revealed that there is no significant difference in the mean achievement scores between male and female students taught electrochemistry using PALM. It was recommended among others that chemistry teachers should make use of PALM to enhance meaningful learning of electrochemistry concept.