Laboratory Resources Availability, Accessibility and Utilization as Correlate of Chemistry Students’ Academic Achievement

Abstract

The research work is a correlational design on laboratory resource availability, accessibility, utilization and chemistry students’ academic performance in public senior secondary schools in Ahoada West Local Government Area in Rivers State, Nigeria. The study had three research questions and corresponding three null hypotheses formulated at 0.05 level of significance. 100 chemistry students in SSII and SSIII were randomly selected to give this sample size for this study. The students were subjected to researcher self-structured questionnaire whose reliability coefficient 0.76 was used to collect the responses which was analyzed using Pearson Product Moment correlation statistics. The findings showed that all three laboratory resource factors – availability, accessibility and utilization had significant relationship with chemistry students’ academic performance, with accessibility standing out as the strongest predictor of performance outcome for the chemistry students in public senior secondary schools in Ahoada west local government area in Rivers State, Nigeria. Hence one of the recommendations was that Government and well-meaning citizens should invest in improving the educational system through funding to providing of science laboratory infrastructure and equipment and training of teachers to enable them engage students in practical exercises as is demanded by the subject chemistry being experimental in nature.