ASSESSMENT OF SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL CHEMISTRY STUDENTS’ COMMUNICATION, CRITICAL THINKING AND PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS IN ABUJA, FCT

Abstract

This study assessed the level of senior secondary school chemistry students’ communication, critical thinking and problem-solving skills in Abuja, F.C.T. The research was guided by three research questions and one null hypotheses. The research adopted the descriptive survey research design. The population of the study comprised of all the 24,315 male and female 2022/2023 Senior Secondary School two (SS II) chemistry students in seventy-seven (77) public senior secondary schools in Abuja. A sample of 382 senior secondary two (SS2) chemistry students comprised of 198 males and 184 females was used for the study. Simple random sampling technique was used to select six schools from the six area councils within Abuja. The instruments for data collection was an adapted questionnaire titled senior secondary school communication, critical thinking and problem-solving skills questionnaire. The validity of the research instrument was done by three experts and average reliability co-efficient for the instrument used was calculated using Cronbach Alpha formula, which yielded average reliability co-efficient value of 0.8. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions one, mean rank and sum of rank were used to answer research question two and three. Mann-Whitney U-test test was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results indicated that senior secondary school chemistry students in Abuja have high level of communication skills. The findings also revealed that there is no significant mean difference in the mean critical thinking skills and problem-solving skills score between the male and female senior secondary school chemistry students. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that curriculum developers, educational evaluators and school heads should encourage teachers to incorporate critical thinking skills, communication and problem-solving skills into the subject curriculum and classroom experiences