Teachers Classroom Motivational Strategies and Basic Science Students’ Academic Performance in Secondary Schools in Abua/Odual LGA, Rivers State

Abstract

The study examined the role of different motivation strategies employed by subject teachers in the classroom to boost students’ performance. It employed a posttest-only quasi-experimental design to achieve the objectives. The study's population consists of all the students from all nine UBE public secondary schools in Abua/Odual Local Government Area, Rivers State from which the simple random sampling techniques were used to select two schools for the study. The simple random sampling technique was adopted to further select two intact classes of 70 students and a class of 50 students totalling 120 participants. The two classes were taught for 6 weeks and the four different motivational strategies were applied during the teaching period Four research questions and four null hypotheses were raised and tested. The research instrument used for collecting data for the study was the Basic Science Achievement Test (BSAT). The instrument was validated and its reliability was established using the test re-test method. The mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while the null hypotheses were tested using the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the independent sample t-test. The result of the study revealed that the refreshment motivational strategy was more effective than others. Males were more responsive to all the strategies than females; however, there was no significant gender difference observed in the different motivational strategies. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others, that educational institutions should consider promoting the provision of meals as a motivational strategy, and the Federal Government school feeding program should be extended to all schools in the country.