CHAPTER ONE

THE PROBLEM

1.1 Introduction

For over five decades, a number of efforts have been made nationally and internationally to improve the teaching and learning of science in schools. This has been a subject of considerable concern in Nigeria. The central concern has been to make the teaching and learning of science in the classroom more meaningful and more effective in order to achieve the educational goals of the society. Effective science teaching involves student’s active participation in the teaching learning process, mo re especially as it involves asking and answering questions. Lack of active participation of students has been described as one of the factors responsible for poor academic performances in science subjects (Inyang, 1988, Bichi; 1988, Mari, 1994 and Usman, 2001).

It has also been indicated in WAEC chief examiners report (2004) results of secondary schools where students performances are generally poor in Biology, Chemistry, Physics and other science related subjects. They perform poorly in questions that require high-level cognitive domain (Winne, 2007). The reason why students perform poorly in questions at high level cognitive domain could be that teachers frequently ask questions that are low in cognitive domain. Therefore the aim of enhancing student’s academic achievement will not be realized if questions asked by teachers are not in conformity with demands of all the levels of Bloom’s taxonomy educational objectives (cognitive domain).

Integrated science was introduced as a foundation to the science courses as well as to promote scientific literacy amongst the Nigeria youths; this is introduced at the lower level of education. It is supposed to give the students the basic scientific knowledge they need as well as to equip them to be scientifically literate. This is because most of the students terminate their science learning at the junior secondary school level. Integrated science as defined by Olanrewaju (1983) is an approach to science in which concepts and principles are presented so as to express the functional unity of scientific thought. The aim of integrated science programme as stated by Usman (2001) is to enable students achieve the process and product content of integrated science. The National Policy on Education (FME, 2004) include integrated science as a core subject at 2 the junior secondary school level in its curriculum. Integrated science emphasizes the teaching and learning processes which lead to fundamental foundation in the sciences at all levels of education. Low academic achievement of students in the sciences, integrated science inclusive, has been a growing concern in the school. To this effect, scholars have carried out studies to investigate the factors that may be responsible. Some of these factors have been linked to the non-availability of teaching materials, lack of adequate laboratory and it facilities, and the methods of teaching used by the teachers among others (Usman, 2007 and 2008). For students to achieve high in science, the teacher has to use a strategy which will enable the students to understand science concepts and create conducive environment that will change effective teacher-student interaction.

The teacher must know the extent to which students have knowledge of a learning task. This is a prerequisite for effective teaching (Bloom, 1981, Hargreaves, 1984).The student unfortunately is not a transparent box through which the teacher can see and read the amount of knowledge that has been or is being acquired. The teacher should be able to assess the student’s understanding of science concept through questioning based on his experiences in teaching/learning outcome in accordance with Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive domain. The age-old technique made famous by Socrates and practiced by classroom teachers has been the use of questions to aid students in developing ideas and conclusions and drawing their own inferences.

Therefore a question is a direction to a learner to examine instructional materials or his memory of it and to produce some response (Redfield and Rouseau, 1981, Gandu, 2006). The cognitive level of a question refers to the nature of cognitive processes required to answer it. There are two broad types of cognitive question styles which are the low-level and high level cognitive questions styles. Low-level questions are called knowledge questions that require students to recall material easily from what they are taught (Cotton, 2001). According to her, low-level questions help students to remember factual information, study for test previously read or presented by a teacher. They are designed to solicit from students’ concept, information, feeling or experiences that were gained in the past and stored in the memory.