Despite recent reforms in the Philippine education system, recent international assessment results have shown that the Philippines trails behind other nations in science education. Among the sciences, Filipino students perform the poorest in physics. Cited reasons include a shortage of qualified teachers, classrooms, laboratories, and quality learning materials. One learning material gaining attention in science education is instructional science comics, whose rationale for classroom use is that they are motivating, visual, permanent, and intermediary. This study used a quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group design to investigate the use of instructional science comics in Philippine classrooms and its effects on students’ abilities and attitudes towards physics. Student physics abilities and attitudes were estimated using an item response theory approach and analyzed using a difference-in-differences framework. The findings have shown that the developed comic book module has significantly improved students’ latent physics ability and attitudes toward physics. Moreover, the study provided evidence of the potential of using instructional science comics to address equity gaps in the science classroom.
Emmanuel Estrellado (Fri,) studied this question.