Gender Variations Favouring Male Students in Perceived Nature of Learning Mole Concept

Abstract

A good number of instructional strategies are identified to help students overcome their learning difficulties in the mole concept. However, Ghanaian senior high school students continue to have difficulties in the mole concept. Hence, there was the need to examine the perceived nature of learning the mole concept in the perspectives of male and female students. An explanatory sequential mixed methods design was adopted to collect quantitative and qualitative data. The students, selected through a multistage sampling procedure from four schools, responded to questionnaire and interview guide. Through independent-samples t-test statistics it was established that though students were full of uncertainty about the perceived nature of the mole concept that of males differed from their female counterparts. Hence, chemistry teachers should create learning environment conducive enough for male and female students to overcome their uncertainty in the mole concept. Keywords: chemistry teachers, gender variations, learning mole concept, perceived nature

Concept difficulty in secondary school chemistry: An intra-play of gender, school location and school type

“…This is especially so because several studies at different times and places have established differences in the performance of chemistry students in secondary schools based on gender, and usually in favour of the males (Adu-Gyamfi & Elikem-Vorsah, 2022;Boachie, Quansah & Oppong, 2021;Kyado, Achor & Adah, 2021). This is to the extent that in recent times, there have been studies dedicated to closing this variance in students' performance based on gender (Abdullahi, Abubakar, Abubakar & Aliyu, 2019;Gongden, John & Gimba, 2019;Naidoo & Sibanda, 2020;Ramnarain & Ramaila, 2018).…”