Cognitive Styles and Attitude to Science of Senior Secondary School Science Students of Different Cognitive Ability Levels

Abstract

The study was designed to determine the cognitive styles and attitude to science of senior secondary school science students of different cognitive ability levels. It also explored the relationship between senior secondary school science students’ attitude towards science and their level of field independency. The study also examined the attitude of and cognitive styles of male and female students of high and low ability levels. The study adopted correlational survey research design. The population comprised all the one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five (1875) Senior Secondary School Two (SSS II) science students offering biology, chemistry and physics in all the public senior secondary schools in Education Zone C of Benue State for 2013/2014 academic session. The population was stratified along ability levels and proportionate stratified random sampling technique was used to select one thousand three hundred and thirty (1330) science students out of which 553 were of high ability and 777 were of low ability from thirty-five (35) intact classes of public senior secondary schools in the five local government areas that was used for the study. Three sets of instrument used for data collection were Science Students Attitude Scale (SSAS), Group Embedded Figure Test (GEFT) and Students Cognitive Ability Levels (SCAL). The GEFT was face validated while the SSAS was face and construct validated. Estimate of internal consistency was obtained through Cronbach’s alpha for SSAS and Kudder-Richardson (K-R20) method was used for GEFT. The internal consistency estimate was found to be 0.882 for SSAS and 0.779 for GEFT. The collected data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation for answering research questions while t-test of difference between proportion and regression analysis were used for testing the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result indicated that the high cognitive ability level students are more field independent and have higher positive attitude towards science than their low cognitive ability level counterparts. The result also showed no significant relationship between sets of attitude scale and measure of students’ level of field independency. It was also found that there was no significant difference between the cognitive styles of male and female science students of low cognitive ability levels. Similarly, it was found that there was no significant difference between the attitude of male and female science students of low cognitive ability levels. The findings made the researcher to conclude that the relationship between measures of students’ level of field independency and attitude was not statistically significant. Based on these findings, it was recommended among others that science teachers should ensure differentiated classroom activities so that high and low cognitive ability level students could have opportunity to engage in tasks appropriate to their needs. Government agencies and professional bodies should organize periodic workshops, seminars and conferences for science teachers designed to improve their ability in managing the skills required in monitoring the complex variable like the cognitive styles and latent trait such as attitude for the effective teaching of science concepts.