Effect of Blended Instructional Strategies (Cooperative, Inquiry-Based, and Demonstration) on Students' Academic Achievement in Physics in Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

This investigation scrutinized the impact of combining diverse pedagogical approaches—specifically peer-collaborative learning, discovery-driven exploration, and practical illustrative techniques—on the scholastic performance of secondary school learners studying introductory electrodynamics (Ohm's Law). The field experiment took place within public educational institutions located in the Ikot Ekpene Senatorial Zone of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria, focusing on Senior Secondary Two cohorts. Two operational inquiries and two corresponding null hypotheses guided the trajectory of the empirical work. Methodologically, the study deployed a quasi-experimental setup utilizing a non-equivalent, pre-evaluated and post-evaluated control group layout. The participant pool comprised 120 secondary learners. The experimental cohort received physics instruction via an integrated mixture of student-centered techniques, whereas the comparison cohort was taught using standard, teacher-centered expository lectures over a six-week intervention period. A specialized Physics Achievement Test (PAT) served as the primary instrument for data gathering, demonstrating a internal reliability metric of 0.81 via Kuder-Richardson Formula 21. Descriptive metrics, including arithmetic means and standard deviations, were employed to clarify the initial inquiries, while an Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was executed to test the statistical assumptions at an alpha threshold of 0.05, treating initial test scores as background covariates. The statistical output confirmed that the integrated instructional framework exerted a mathematically significant positive impact on the mastery of Ohm's Law concepts among the participants, yielding an F(1,117) = 48.32, p < .05, with a substantial partial eta squared value (η^2 = .292) signifying a robust effect magnitude. Conversely, gender-based analysis indicated no statistically observable disparity between male and female cohorts subjected to the integrated educational setup, producing an F (1,56) = 0.75, p > .05. The investigation concluded that combining student-centered techniques substantially optimizes cognitive gains in physics concepts while maintaining pedagogical equity across genders. Consequently, the paper recommends that classroom instructors actively transition toward these mixed instructional frameworks to replace single-method delivery.