Revealing School-related Variables and How It Can Adopt to Present Physics Teaching

Post date: Mar 30, 2017 2:44:01 AM

By: Lucky Sonny A Ligsanan

March 28, 2017

School-related variables are equally vital with teacher quality in the teaching-learning process. This includes professional mentoring, access to library, access to internet, availability of instructional materials, educational technologies and laboratory equipment.

Seasoned Physics teachers are individuals who learn life-long and refine their skills throughout their development and who learn and apply new methods. Face-to-face mentoring has been conducted for a long time as a solution regarding professional development. Professional mentoring allows fresh Physics teachers to adapt themselves to the profession and help them find academic and social support from seasoned Physics Teachers.

Positive links between the number of books students borrowed and grade point average are empirically discovered. This entails that Library resources in Physics (e.g., books, journal articles, items in the reserve collection) must be updated and increased to catch students’ attention for on-site research and/or take home research in Physics.

In developing countries like the Philippines, access to internet is available only on a very limited scale. However, downloadable Physics applets are available online that can run on any computer as long as its java ready. Physics oriented cellphone applications are available also that can be transferred easily from one smartphone to another.

In the study of Tatar, Tuysuz, Tosun and Ilhan (2016) to investigate the factors affecting students’ science achievement in Turkey, they determined that science teachers’ thought that students’ science achievement was affected by teacher at 29.66 percent, by student at 26.05 percent, by material/activity 16.02 percent, by curriculum 14.98 percent, and by learning environment 13.29 percent. This ranks instructional material among the top three factors need to be addressed to ensure student achievement. The researchers conclude that the utilization of improvised instructional materials also promote and enhance effective teaching-learning process.

Oladejo, Olosunde, Gbolagade, Amos and Isola (2011) revealed that there is a significant difference in the achievement of students taught using standard instructional materials, those taught with improvised instructional material and those in the conventional instruction. Oladejo, et. al (2011) conclude that the utilization of improvised instructional materials promote and enhance effective teaching-learning process, thus, Physics teachers should be encouraged to use them in secondary education programme.

Science laboratory with adequate equipment is a critical variable in determining the quality of output from senior secondary school Physics. Olufunke (2012) confirmed that schools with maximum adequately utilized Physics laboratory equipment had the highest mean score in Physics achievement test. Oluwasegon, Ohwofosirai and Emagbetere (2015) added that Physics laboratory helps to inculcate scientific reasoning and enhances performance among Physics students in senior secondary schools.