Content coverage and students’ achievements in secondary school physics: The Delta state example of Nigeria

According to Willis (1993), learning is content bound and effective instruction involves breaking topic into a series of small discrete (but hierarchically related) steps. This broken down topics can be referred to as concepts and this will help the teacher to handle (teach) each topic holistically and thoroughly to enhance maximum achievement by the students.

The achievement of students in science in Nigeria has remained consistently poor over the years (Eze 2003; Aprebo, 2003; Betiku 2003; Betiku 2001.). Researchers have explored the effects of teachers’ qualification (Etukudo, Elijah and Nnaobi, 2003; Landu, 2003), effects of instructional materials and laboratory (Dareng and Agenda 2002), attitude of teachers and students towards the teaching and learning of sciences (Eze, 2003), the effects of peer group (Briggs, 1995) on students academic achievement.

Though, these researches are quite revealing, the problem still persists. Hence, there is need for more researches and increased implementation of recommendations.

A visit to schools in most Nigerian villages, semi urban areas and even towns and cities reveals a situation where one: (1) Students resume normal academic work after school’s resumption. (2) Teachers turning the school into a market by selling goods during school hours. (3) Teachers busy discussing and students loitering on the streets. (4) management either guilty of such offence or not able to enforce punitive measure against such erring staff because of “godfatherism “in developing countries and Nigeria in particular and so on. This is true when students during examinations or aptitude tests confess with bitterness that most of the tasks given were not only difficult but strange to them because they were not taught and this they attribute to their failure as students.

If teaching is not content bound, the science teacher would be happy to pick few areas or concepts well known to him and leave other areas of the concept he may consider difficult and tedious. The negligence by teachers to teach the whole of the stipulated content has led to poor achievement in standardized examinations. For instance, Aworanti and Olakanmi (1997) observed that most teachers of biology seldom teach ecological concepts of biology because they consider it difficult and the consequence is low achievement. Igbokwe (2002) reveal that some teachers concede without any feeling of shame that they do not understand the concept of Mathematics they teach. Betiku (2003) argued that teachers are the main determinants of quality in education. According to Betiku (2003), if they are apathetic, immoral, and anti social, the whole nation will be doomed but if they are ignorant of their disciplines and impact wrong information, they are not only useless but dangerous. Lack of knowledge of a particular concept and negligence to teach because of personal reasons are the two main reasons why contents in schools are not covered. Others include lack of instructional materials to teach some concepts that requires it; public holidays which reduces the study time and so on. Therefore, it is imperative to look at the effect of the discussed abnormalities on students’ academic achievement and coverage of expected contents by teachers before external examinations.