Ethno-Chemistry Practices: A Panacea for Teaching Selected Difficult Concepts and Enhancing Rural Secondary Schools Students’ Interest and Understanding in Chemistry

Abstract

The design adopted was a semi-experimental design where the experimental group was taught chemistry content using ethno-chemistry practices while the control group were also taught the same content with a conventional method. The study involved all rural (SS2) participants, made up of 2,764 students from the 113 schools in six (6) local government areas. Stratified and purposive sampling techniques were employed in selecting one hundred and forty-four (144) subjects after the students were taught in intact classes. The instrument used for data collection was the chemistry interest questionnaire and the chemistry understanding test (CUT). The research questions were answered using descriptive statistics. The hypotheses were tested using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The study revealed that rural secondary school students taught selected difficult chemistry concepts with the use of ethno-chemistry practices had a significantly higher interest in learning chemistry (p=0.000; >.05) than those taught with the conventional method. Furthermore, findings revealed that the use of ethnomaterials accounted for 76.6% of the variance in understanding of chemistry concepts among students taught with ethno-chemistry materials compared to their counterparts taught without ethno-chemistry materials. It was recommended that chemistry teachers should adopt ethno-chemistry practices in teaching chemistry as an innovative approach to enhancing students’ interest and understanding