“Impact of Laboratory-Based Teaching Strategy on Students’ Attitudes and Mastery of Chemistry in Katsina Metropolis”, Katsina State, Nigeria

The study sought to determine the impact of laboratory- based teaching strategy on students’ attitude and mastery of chemistry concepts. Two schools were randomly selected and served as experimental and control schools; one hundred and sixty (160) SS II chemistry students were also randomly selected from the population. The same students (160) were divided into two. The first 80 was assigned control group. And the second 80 was assigned experimental group. Pre-test was administered to ascertain the level of compatibility. The experimental group was taught using laboratory approach while control group was taught using lecture method. After the treatment, Chemistry Concept Achievement Test (CCAT) was administered, also Student Attitude Questionnaire (SAQ) was administered to both experimental and control groups to ascertain the change of attitude if any. Four research questions and four hypotheses were raised for the study; the research questions were answered using the data collected and analyzed through the use of SPSS (Statistics Package for Social Sciences). T-tests were used to test the four hypotheses; the tests were designed to determine the impact of laboratory-based teaching strategy on students’ performance. The finding of the study revealed that students taught using laboratory teaching strategy performed better and showed positive attitudes more than the students taught using lecture method. Similarly, there was no significant difference in the mastery of chemistry concept among the male and female students in the experimental group. The finding further revealed that female students within the experimental group demonstrated higher interest than their male counterparts. It was also found that laboratory teaching method was more effective and therefore science teachers should teach students the skills for investigation rather than telling them facts in chemistry.