Effects of Differentiated Instruction on Students' Retentive Knowledge in Periodicity

Abstract

This study explores effects of differentiated instruction (DI) on students' retention of periodicity concepts in chemistry, compared to conventional lecture-based teaching methods. The research answered three questions and three hypotheses. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design, involving 110 SSII chemistry students from Esan Central Local Government Area, Edo State, Nigeria, using a multi-stage sampling procedure. Two intact groups from two secondary schools were assigned to experimental and control groups, respectively. The experimental group received DI through diverse instructional methods, including gamification, collaborative learning, and tiered assignments, while the control group was taught using conventional lecture-based methods. Data were collected using the Chemistry Retention Test (CRT). the reliability of the CRT was established using the Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 (KR-20) to be 0.92. Data for the study was gathered from the scores obtained from the test and were analyzed using mean and standard deviation for the research questions, while hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). Findings revealed among others that there was a significance difference with level (p-value) of 0.000, between DI and conventional lecture-based indicating that the DI improved students' retention of periodicity concepts in chemistry better than conventional lecture-based teaching methods. Therefore, the study concluded that students taught using differentiated instruction (DI) demonstrate significantly better retention of periodicity knowledge than those taught through conventional lecture-based methods. And recommendations were made among others that teachers should avoid relying solely on conventional-based methods and adopt more student-centered DI instructional strategy that encourage active learning and conceptual understanding.