Enhancing Students’ Achievement in Chemistry through the Piagetian Model: The Learning Cycle

The study sought to investigate the efficacy of the learning cycle on students ' achievement in Chemistry.Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study.It was hypothesized that the mean achievement scores of students taught chemistry using the learning cycle and those taught through traditional approaches would not differ significantly.Piaget's theory on mental functioning formed the theoretical framework of the study.430 students in Kenya participated in the study.Pretestposttest control group was the study design.Cronbach alpha used to test the reliability of the instruments (Pretest and posttest) gave 0.76 and 0.72 respectively.Data was analyzed using mean and standard deviation for the research questions; ANOVA and t-test for hypotheses showed that the learning cycle enhanced the achievement of students in the experimental group.The mean achievement scores showed that the boys performed better than the girls while independent t-test and ANOVA showed the difference between the mean scores as statistically insignificant.