Effect of Nature of Chemistry Practicals on Students Performance in Chemistry in Public Secondary Schools of Machakos and Nairobi Counties in Kenya

The study investigated the effect of nature of chemistry practicals on students performance in chemistry in public secondary schools of Machakos and Nairobi counties in Kenya. The study examines and describes the effect of the nature of practicals used in teaching and learning of secondary school chemistry. The students performance in chemistry was determined from scores obtained by students in Students Achievement Tests (SATs) done just before and immediately after exposure to class experiment and teacher demonstration lessons in the topic under investigation. Descriptive and inferential statistics such as the mean and independent t-test were used to discuss the research findings. The study found that students taught chemistry using class experiments lessons performed better than those taught using teacher demonstration comprising the whole class or large groups. Results from the study showed that the use of class experiments lessons when teaching secondary school chemistry had a positive effect on students performance in chemistry. This implies that the nature of chemistry practicals used in the instruction of chemistry has an effect on the performance of students in the subject. The results of the study also indicate that the students had comparable performance in chemistry before treatment and that there was a significant difference in performance in the post test between the experimental and control groups. The study recommends that the nature of chemistry practicals be taken into consideration when planning and teaching secondary school chemistry so as to improve performance in the subject.