FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE TEACHERS CHOICE OF STRATEGIES IN TEACHING CHEMISTRY IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

This study was carried out with the aim of identifying the factors that influence the use of teaching strategies by chemistry teachers in Ebonyi state secondary schools. Two research questions guided the study, two hypotheses were stated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The population of the study comprised all the 210 chemistry teachers. The instrument used for the data collection was a closed response questionnaire developed by the researcher and validated by 3 experts, it was pilot tested and it yielded alpha value of 0.90. The data analyses were done using mean, Z-test and one-way analysis of variance. The results showed that all the 25 factors studied influenced the use of teaching strategies. It was observed that there is significant difference between the responses of the male and female chemistry teachers on thirteen items, while inter-zonal differences were also observed among teachers in the 3 education zones of the state. The researcher made the following recommendations based on the findings. The chemistry teachers and indeed all the science teachers should be encouraged to go for information communication technology training, more chemistry teachers should be employed to enhance the performance of students in the subject, both the state government and the ministry of education should build more classroom blocks and provide enough furniture and other necessary equipment in the school, among others.