Changing the Narratives of Physics-Learning in Secondary Schools: The Role of Culture, Technology, and Locational Context

Abstract

This study is concerned with the persistent underperformance of secondary school students in Nigeria in physics. The study was conducted in two phases. Phase one was a survey of difficult concepts in physics, while phase two explored the potency of culturo-techno-contextual approach (CTCA) in breaking the barriers to meaningful learning of refractive indices, which ranked the most difficult concept in phase one of the study. A total of 1621 SS3 students from Nigeria and Ghana participated in the survey phase. The second phase employed a mixed-methods approach (quasi-experimental and interviews) with a total of 205 SS1 students. The control group was taught with the lecture method and had 96 students (54 males; 42 females), while the experimental group, taught with CTCA, had 109 students (65 females; 44 males). Both groups had a pretest and posttest using the achievement test in refractive indices; treatment lasted four weeks. Data gathered in the survey were analyzed using mean rank analysis, and refractive indices was perceived as the most difficult to learn. Phase two data were analyzed using one-way ANCOVA since intact classes were used. The result obtained showed that the experimental group performed better (mean for experimental = 15.49; control 11.97; F (1, 202) = 64.48; p < 0.01)) than the control group. Implications of the study are highlighted and the need for further studies is recommended.

1. Introduction

Since the arrival of the new normal, which came to us all like an intruding visitor rather than an invited guest and yet demanded a bed space within our homes, science communities around the globe have reawakened their spirits and renewed their calls to promote scientific literacy among and within all regions of the world through inclusive learning, concern for equity and sociocultural issues, technology-enhanced teaching and learning, respect for cultural diversity, decolonizing approaches to learning science, and disrupting the image of a scientist [1]. While the presence of the COVID-19 pandemic is still being felt across the world, some regions such as Europe, America, and parts of Asia were quicker to pull defense than others and even had to shoulder the responsibilities of others including Africa, simply because of their level of scientific advancement [2].

In Nigeria, scientific literacy, the bedrock for scientific developments, remains poor. However, many efforts including curriculum reforms, policy formulation, alignment of national interests with the regional aspirations (AU’s Agenda 2063) are being put in place to ensure that the slow uptake of producing the much-needed scientists for the nation is catalyzed. In spite of these provisions, very little or no improvement has been recorded. By the Nigerian education structure, science learning is infused into the school curriculum from the primary to the tertiary level. At the primary and junior secondary school level, basic science and technology as a subject is compulsory for all students [3], while science learning becomes a choice at the senior secondary school level. As depicted by ref [4], in the STEM career pipeline, it is at this level that a sharp drop in the possible future STEM professionals is first observed and following our personal and collective observations for over a decade, this drop in population usually comes at the end of year one and the beginning of year two of the senior secondary school. This prompted us to ask the question, why do these students opt out of science for other fields?

The provisions of the curriculum for science learning in senior secondary school in Nigeria stipulates that other than the general subjects (English language, mathematics, civic education, and a trade subject), every science student must offer biology, chemistry, and physics. Before 2014, when the revised curriculum was first tested, biology was a general subject for both science and non-science students. It was considered as a subject that every student should be offered and as such, most science students do not perceive it a difficult subject [5] and to date, this perception has not changed. On the other hand, chemistry and physics in particular are perceived as difficult subjects [6].

Of these two subjects, physics appears to be the most feared among secondary school students. The mathematical nature of physics (virtually every topic in the curriculum involves calculations) is one major reason why most students will voluntarily drop physics for other subjects involving no calculations, added to this is the perceived abstractness of the subject owing to teachers’ choice of teaching method and lack of exposure to practical sessions/laboratory experiments due to lack of or inadequate laboratories and lab apparatus and reagents in many schools [7,8]. Apparently, it is this perceived difficulty in learning physics that retards the students’ interest in physics [9,10] and also deters them from learning science at the senior secondary level, thereby narrowing the supply chain for the needed future STEM career professionals. This is especially so because at least a credit pass in physics at the end of secondary education is required to pursue a career in STEM in any institution of higher learning in Nigeria [3,11].

1.1. The State of Secondary School Physics in Nigeria

The role of the knowledge of physics in advancement in electronic and computer technologies made physics an enviable and attention-seeking subject within the science domain. As far back as 1984, ref [12] asserted that physics is and will remain the fundamental science subject that has contributed significantly to the technological development of the world at large. Almost four decades after, the story has not changed [13]. However, students’ performance in this subject has perpetually been poor and despite the numerous interventions and concerns by government agencies, science educators and researchers channeled towards improving the performance rate, not much of success has been recorded [14,15,16,17,18].

Physics educators in the country have raised concern about this appalling state of students’ performance in physics particularly at secondary school level. From the lenses of ref [8], if this worrisome state of physics is not checked in time, not only will the students continue to perform poorly but over time, students will lose interest in the subject and the overall effect will ripple on the quality and quantity of future STEM professionals that the nation will produce. As shown in Figure 1, the highest students’ success rate recorded in WASSCE in physics between 2010 and 2017 was 68% in 2012. By the following year (2013), a sharp decline (46%), which struck the hearts of many stakeholders who were already in euphoria that the good days have arrived based on the 2012 success rate, was recorded.

To this end, it is safe to say that over the last 12 years therefore, the average national performance in physics in WASSCE is about 55%. It sounds like a pass mark but for a society like ours, that is striving to have more students study STEM-related courses, it is not. What is more worrisome about this figure is that even if the nation had recorded 100% success rate in all of these years, we would still be needing to canvas for more students in the sciences due to low entrant rate [8] but the task (winning more students for science) would have been much easier.

1.2. Factors Affecting Meaningful Learning of Physics in Nigeria Secondary Schools

Rote learning contradicts the guiding principles of meaningful learning; it emphasizes learning by memorization (cramming) and repetition with little or no effort to integrate new knowledge with existing concepts in the cognitive structure [19]. What is learned under rote is easily forgotten and hardly applied to new situations. Meaningful learning on the other hand is not based on memorization and repetition but on linking prior knowledge with new, incoming information. What is learned is long lasting and can be easily applied to new situations. There is a deliberate effort to link new knowledge with higher order concepts in the cognitive structure. In an extensive study entitled “Attaining meaning learning of ecology and genetics through the concept mapping heuristic,” ref [20] confirmed that meaningful learning involves understanding of how all the pieces of an entire concept fit together. Meaningful learning is active, constructive, and most importantly, it allows students to be fully engaged in the learning process. The spectrum of easiness to difficulty falls along the rote learning and meaningful learning polar axes.

In most secondary school classrooms in Nigeria, the frontal (lecture room) teaching arrangement where the teacher presents him/herself like a sage on the stage is what prevails. The most commonly adopted teaching method favored by this arrangement is the lecture method [21]. During lessons, the teacher does the talking and the students do the listening. They are rendered passive and interaction between the students and teacher or among the students is seldom encouraged [22]. The teaching–learning transaction between the teacher and the students starts and ends with talk and chalk exercise [23]. This type of teaching–learning mode only campaigns for rote learning as it does not have the capacity to promote meaningful learning of science concepts.

There has been a plethora of studies channeled towards identifying the causes of the persistence underperformance of students in physics in the country and the growing lack of interest in the subject resulting from lack of meaningful learning of physics concepts [8,13,24,25]. On a general note, ref [26] asserted that a key factor for students’ difficulties in learning physics is that students think about physics concepts as things rather than as processes and that there is a significant barrier between these two ontological categories. This is particularly reflective of today’s learners who possess high visual characteristics and prefer to expend energy in what they can see rather than what they can think. Summarily, the microgenic and macrogenic factors mitigating against meaningful leaning of physics as identified in these previous studies converged at two points; concepts difficulty (students find physics concepts difficult to learn) and teachers’ choice of teaching method. Accordingly, ref [27,28] submitted that the reason for the unending underperformance of students in physics in Nigeria is because students find the concepts difficult to understand and the teachers find them difficult to teach.

In the last five years, a few studies have been conducted in different parts of the country on concepts that students find difficult to learn in physics [5,29,30,31] with the hope that if the difficult aspects of the subject are identified and checked, students’ performance in both internal and external examinations will attain the desired improvement. However, we observed that the findings of these studies vary significantly from one another. For example, the concept “Work, Energy, and Power” which was reported by ref [30] as the least perceived difficult concept in physics among secondary school students was found to be a very difficult concept by ref [29].

Therefore, we hypothesized that the long-coming unresolved underperformance of students in physics may be attributed to these disparities (inconsistent findings), as classroom teachers may have been misinformed over time. Among other possible factors, it appeared that the limitations of each of these previous studies regarding sample characteristics, location of study, and curriculum coverage are the underlying causes for the observed incoherence. Thus, in the phase one of the current study, we tried to cater for these limitations by increasing our sample size to at least double of any of the previous studies (the highest had been 830 participants [5] because according to ref [32], the higher your sample size, the lower the chances of committing a type 1 error. We also extended our sampling to Ghana which operates the same WASSCE syllabus in physics and other STEM subjects as Nigeria; and ensuring and establishing a strong validity evidence for the instrument used.

As summarized in the preceding paragraph, the second point of convergence on factors affecting meaningful learning of physics was the teacher choice of teaching method. We noted that in all of the previous interventions aimed at improving students’ performance in physics, the teaching methods (such as jigsaw; think-pair-share; and flipped classroom) explored were approaches developed outside the context of Africa. These approaches have been reported not to be culturally and contextually responsive to science teaching and learning in Nigeria [21,33,34] and hence, not addressing contemporary issues such as inclusiveness [35]; relevance of culture in STEM [36,37] and identity development [38] in STEM teaching and learning and as such, the persistent problems of the past still gaze at us. In light of this understanding, in the phase two (experimental phase) of the current study, we explored the potency of a teaching approach that embeds the value of culture, technology, and locational context in its implementation on a traditionally perceived difficult concept in physics.

1.3. Culture, Technology, and Locational Context in Science Teaching and Learning

Science is part of social and cultural traditions. It is influenced by the society and culture in which it is practiced. Scientific knowledge is created from human imagination and logical reasoning. This creation is based on observations and inferences of the natural world [39]. Down through the ages, the first settlers in various geographical locations studied and took control of their environment in ways that addressed their everyday need for food, shelter, health, security, and several other needs that assured some measure of good quality of life. The knowledge and skills acquired and refined over time by such indigenous people is an element of their culture [40]. The universal nature of science also reflects clearly in the commonness in how people of different backgrounds and locations attend to their basic needs and solve daily problems. Practices and techniques in farming (irrigation, storage), medicine (use of herbs, bone-setting), clothing, and security were available in somewhat similar forms across different cultures of the world, particularly in Africa [41,42]. Explicitly, modern science is a product of cultural knowledge and practices and can only be best taught, learnt, and understood in relation to its tenets [43]. Several studies have acknowledged and reiterated the integration and relevance of culture or indigenous knowledge in teaching and learning of science [44,45,46,47,48,49].

In these studies, the authors argued and illustrated that students were able to learn meaningfully and understand complex concepts and processes in biology, physics, and chemistry by drawing on their indigenous knowledge and practices related to such complex or difficult concepts. In addition, owing to the unending poor performance of students in mathematics, resulting from phobia of calculations and other factors relating to teachers, curriculum, and students’ attitude to learning, some recent studies [48,50,51,52] channeled towards finding lasting solutions have shown that the use of indigenous knowledge and indigenous games in teaching and learning of mathematics have helped to improve performance and sustain students’ interest. The findings of these studies summarily expressed that teaching and learning of some traditionally perceived difficult concepts in science and mathematics were made easy through the use of cultural or indigenous knowledge. They also inferred that the students demonstrated motivation and enthusiasm to learn based on the teaching approach adopted.

The observed interest (enthusiasm) according to ref [53] can clearly be attributed to situational interest. This type of interest is developed based on perception of how enjoyable a topic or learning activities was. It is teacher-dependent and connects directly with context-related interest. Approaches that allow students to explore their immediate environment and connect or relate their ways of life to classroom learning and activities are context-based and have been reported to promote meaningful learning of STEM concepts [43,53]. When students are able to see the relevance of day-to-day functions to classroom activities and vice versa, they only not pay attention and develop interest in learning such concepts, they also develop a good sense of inclusion, healthy self-concept, and science identity with a tinge of pride [35]. It is these observed learning benefits which accrue from contextualizing science teaching and learning that support the use of local and context-based examples to explain science concepts and to help students attain meaningful learning [54,55,56].

A characteristic of cultural and scientific knowledge is that they are universal and context specific and so is the ubiquitous nature of technology. Today, in most parts of the world, rural or urban, the three most common things that anyone would imagine finding in a classroom would be the teacher, students, and technology. Modern or relatively outdated, from chalkboard to smartboard, from opaque projectors to holograms, and from VHF to virtual and augmented realities, technology has long been considered as an important tool for supporting and enhancing teaching and learning [57]. Several studies have attested to possibilities of technology to promote meaningful learning of STEM concepts within and outside the classroom [58,59]. Corroborating the submissions of these studies, ref [49] also argued that if used appropriately, technology in the science classroom will not only increase learning outcomes, but it will also help to reduce anxiety and sustain learners’ interest in science learning. One major advantage which technology offers to today’s teaching–learning functions is flexibility. Through the Internet and access to mobile technology, learning is not confined to the wall of the classroom. Students can learn anywhere, any time, and at their pace. It is an advantage which suits the nature of today’s learners [59] that the study hopes to cling to through CTCA to ease students’ learning of a traditionally perceived difficult physics concept.

1.4. Why the Culturo-Techno-Conceptual Approach (CTCA)?

There is an ever-growing call for culturally and contextually responsive teaching pedagogies that can help break the traditional barriers to meaningful learning of science, particularly among scientifically and technologically backward nations. In response to this call, several teaching methods have been developed and explored. This array of teaching methods has recorded some gains and were at least helpful in the acquisition of factual scientific knowledge. However, to achieve the “Africa we want” as detailed in the African Union Commission’s agenda 2063, African students need science learning that thrives beyond memorization of scientific facts, one that affords them the strength to meaningfully learn science in the digital world [60].

Africa needs to rewrite how science content is being delivered in its classrooms in ways that will not only enhance meaningful learning but also attract the younger ones to study science. Unarguably, more than any other region of the world, it is Africa who needs to advertise science learning as much as possible, raise future scientists who will be able to cater for its scientific needs when they arise and ensure that the continent does not have to completely depend on others for its survival. If there will ever be another pandemic, Africa should be prepared to take the lead in the production of a vaccine for its cure and not wait to receive donations as usual. Ensuring that this is achieved is the responsibility of all African science educators.

The goal of any teacher is to ensure that students learn and learn meaningfully. The attainment of this goal is pursued through a variety of ways including using pedagogical tools that best suit the context where that curriculum is being delivered [39].

One of the objectives of physics education is to identify factors inhibiting students’ learning of physics concepts and to address such factors in ways that lead to effective learning of such concepts. These inhibitors according to ref [61] usually include teachers’ factors arising from the choice of instructional/teaching method and as well as students’ factors resulting from lack of pre-instruction preparation. Indeed, whatever difficulty students experience in meaningfully learning any science subject or concept, it can be traced to how the content was delivered to the students [23,62,63]. It is based on this understanding that this study explored how the power of students’ cultural or indigenous knowledge, modern technology, and the locational context of the school/students can be harnessed to address the persistent poor performance of senior secondary school students in physics [22,58,64,65], hence, our choice of culturo-techno-contextual approach, popularly known as CTCA.

CTCA is a product of over 40 years of inquiry on how best to present or teach STEM subjects to black students in ways that will promote effective learning and enhance the application of the STEM knowledge to solving contemporary real-life problems in Africa and other parts of the world. The first empirical study to use CTCA examine the impact of the teaching approach in improving the achievement and attitude of secondary school students in Nigeria on perceived logic gate concepts in computer studies [66]. The findings of the study revealed that CTCA has a statistically significant positive impact on the achievement score as well as the attitude of the sampled students towards learning logic gate. Subsequently, a few studies that have been conducted targeting other difficult concepts in ICT and biology as perceived by the students have reported the effectiveness of the approach in teaching and learning of STEM subjects in Nigeria.

A study on the impact of CTCA on students’ learning outcomes in perceived difficult ecology concepts in biology and how ambient the context of the teaching method for STEM teachers and students in Nigeria [62] show that CTCA does not only improve the achievement of the students, but also helps to reduce the students’ anxiety level in the biology class. The report of the observation data revealed that the students were excited in finding scientific relevance of their culture as every lesson was strongly weaved into their local context. This result resonates with the findings of ref [34]. In his research on the impact of CTCA on students’ scientific explanation in genetics and ecology (another perceived difficult concept in biology), ref [34] concludes that enhancing African students’ understanding of scientific concepts using the related cultural/indigenous knowledge and experiences and drawing practical examples from within the locational context of the students improves learning outcomes.

Similar trends of results were found by refs [33,67,68]. This group of researchers embarked on testing the efficacy of the CTCA on improving students’ performance in perceived difficult concepts in biology and in turn stimulating students’ interest in STEM fields. However, the yarning gap in the CTCA literature can be seen from two points. First, all the studies conducted using this approach are either unpublished master’s dissertations, doctoral theses, or accepted international conference proposals. Second, all the previous endeavors were either in biology, chemistry, or ICT. Therefore, this study not only intends to explore the efficacy of this new tool in bolstering students’ meaningful learning of physics, but also to create/reinforce the public awareness about the existence of CTCA to STEM teachers across the globe.

1.5. Research Questions and Hypothesis

This study was guided by three research questions and one null hypothesis. (1) What topics/concepts in the secondary school physics curriculum do students find difficult to learn? (2) Is the culturo-techno-contextual approach (CTCA) potent in breaking the barriers to learning of refractive indices? and (3) What perception do students hold about learning physics using CTCA? There will be no statistically significant difference in the achievement (mean scores) of students taught using the traditional lecture method and those taught using the culturo-techno-contextual approach.

1.6. Model, Philosophy, and Theoretical Frameworks

The understanding that science is universal depicts that it is present in every culture and its presence can be felt through the indigenous and cultural knowledge and practices of a people which signifies their worldview. According to ref [69] culture makes society as society makes culture. It can only be preserved from the past and transmitted into the future by learning, hence its essence as one of the tripods of CTCA. The theory base of this study draws from Vygotsky’s theory of social constructivism and instructional scaffolding and Ausubel’s theory of meaningful verbal learning and advance organizer. Ref [70] argues that culture is the primary determinant of knowledge processing and construction. Learning takes place through social interaction among the people bound by culture created by their unique strengths, language, and experiences. The theory sees learning as an essentially social process where important roles are played by parents, teachers, peers, culture, and the society at large. The theory emphasizes social interaction within the family and with knowledgeable others in the society as basis for a child’s acquisition of knowledge and behavior that are relevant to the society.

This provides support for the implementation of CTCA. The part A of step 1 in the implementation of CTCA (see Figure 2 and www.ctcapproach.com (17 March 2021) for details) requires students to seek information about indigenous (cultural) knowledge related to a given topic from their parents, guardians, or any more knowledgeable other (MKO) before coming to class. This action depicts interaction which Vygotsky argues plays a crucial role in the development of higher psychological functions of the children. Corroborating this argument, ref [71,72] asserted that learning as a human behavior is rested on interaction with significant others within the social environment influenced by the culture of the people. This significance of culture in knowledge formulation is what CTCA leverages. The pre-lesson knowledge obtained from this interaction and part B of the step 1, which requires the students to visit YouTube to watch a video relevant to the lesson, serves as an advance organizer [73], making it easier for the students to incorporate the new information into their cognitive structure during the main lesson. From Ausubel’s perspective, this will bring about meaningful learning. The notion of an advanced organizer was proposed by Ausubel as a way of helping students to learn meaningfully rather than rote learning by linking their ideas with new information, concepts, or materials.

As can be seen in the implementation procedure, step 2 of CTCA affords the students an opportunity to interact with one another in a group discussion (mixed sex and mixed ability), sharing among themselves the pre-lesson information/knowledge they have acquired from interaction with the MKO (parents and the YouTube). This way, the not so academically strong students get to learn from the academically strong ones and vice versa through scaffolding. According to Vygotsky, this structure of learning (scaffolding) provides support for students to acquire new knowledge or skills or aspects of it which ordinarily, they may not have gained independently, their zone of proximal development (ZPD). The ZPD as defined by Vygotsky is the set of skills or knowledge a student cannot do on his/her own but can do with the help or guidance of a more knowledgeable other (MKO). Summarily, before any lesson in CTCA-powered class, students are directed to interact with parents or any adult on cultural practices or local knowledge related to the content and to watch related videos on YouTube. While getting to the classroom, the students share these findings among themselves. This way, the students learn from interactions with parents and through YouTube videos (more knowledgeable other—MKO). They also learn through interaction and scaffolding with peers and gradually, they move from their zone of can do without help to a higher zone of proximal development (ZPD) espoused by Vygotsky [70,74].

CTCA affords every student an opportunity to link classroom learning to their cultural background, helping them to relate their ways of life to the classroom activities and promoting learning interest. This is the key tenet of Nkrumah’s ethnophilosophy—one of the philosophical bases of CTCA. Within the African settings, ethnophilosophy has been used to record the beliefs and practices found in the African cultures. Its peculiarity revolves around shared beliefs, values, and assumptions that are implicit in the languages and other wings of the African cultures. The cultural component of the CTCA is based on such shared beliefs and practices that are relevant to a given STEM concept when using the approach. Indeed, the CTC approach banks on the prior knowledge gained from these beliefs and practices of the indigenous communities to create a “mental scaffolding” and to catalyze meaningful learning in CTCA-powered lessons.

2. Methodology

This study was conducted in two phases. The first phase was a survey while the second phase was an experimental phase where we adopted the explanatory sequential (mixed methods) design. The first phase surveyed concepts perceived as difficult to learn by the students as contained in the physics curriculum/syllabus for senior school certificate examinations in West Africa. The second phase explored the potency of CTCA in breaking the barriers to meaningful learning of the concept perceived as most difficult to learn from our survey.

2.1. Participants in Phase 1

To increase the credibility of our survey of the difficult concepts in physics and to cater for the limitations of previous similar studies, we decided to expand our search beyond Nigeria. Of the five countries using the West African Senior School Certificate Examinations syllabus, Nigeria and Ghana make up about 85% of the student population. This provides some assurances that the sample of the study from the two countries will depress the possibility of committing type 1 error, hence the rationale for selecting the two countries for the study. A total of 1621 SS3 (final year) physics students who at the time of the survey had completed over 95% of the entire syllabus content participated in the study. About 51% of the respondents were females while about 49% were males. Three-quarters of the schools were in urban areas, the rest being rural-located. About a third (35.1%) of the participants were from privately-owned schools while 64.9% were students in public (government-owned) schools.

2.2. Instrument and Data Collection—Phase 1

The difficult concepts in physics questionnaire (DCPQ) was developed by the research team and used to collect data for this phase of the study. It had five sections. Section A collected demographic data. Section B had 20 concepts (see

Table 1. Ranking of difficult concepts in senior secondary physics (N = 1621).

Physics Concepts	Mean	Mean Rank
Refractive indices of rectangular and triangular prisms	2.32	1st
Electromagnetism	2.29	2nd
Radioactivity	2.25	3rd
Convex and concave lenses	2.19	4th
Sound production, propagation, and modulation	2.19	4th
Simple harmonic motion	2.18	6th
Specific latent heat	2.18	6th
Voltage, resistance, and current in an electrical circuit	2.16	8th
Simple machines: pulley system, levers, and inclined planes	2.08	9th
Waves	2.07	10th
Gravitational fields	2.05	11th
Specific heat capacity	2.02	12th
Density and relative density	1.99	13th
Velocity–time graph	1.97	14th
Projectiles	1.90	15th
Vectors	1.84	16th
Linear expansivity	1.81	17th
Friction	1.77	18th
Newton’s Laws of Motion	1.76	19th
Gas laws	1.74	20th

) drawn from the WASSCE syllabus used by secondary schools in Nigeria and Ghana. Items in the section were constructed on a three-point rating scale of very difficult, moderately difficult, and not difficult. Section C sought to find out from the respondents the factors influencing their perception of the difficulty of the topics. This section had a listing of possible reasons for the difficulties, derived from a pilot study and placed on a four-point rating scale of: strongly agree (SA), agree (A), disagree (D), and strongly disagree (SD). Section D sought participants’ suggestions for improvement.

Validation of DCCQ was conducted by a team of 12 experts in science and technology education. Five of whom were physics teachers in secondary schools in Nigeria and Ghana with over ten years of teaching and assessment experience. Each of the sections in the draft instrument was scrutinized to ensure that the instrument not only passed content validity but also construct validity. The last stage of the validation process was to sample the opinion of 25 students from five schools (not inclusive in the study sample) to validate our claim that the class of students selected for the survey was appropriate. We found that none of the 25 students reported to have been taught less than 90% of the concepts in the questionnaire. Having confirmed that the instrument can measure what it was designed to measure, we adopted the test-retest procedure to determine the reliability of the instrument.

Two weeks after the first administration of the instrument to 168 students (we had 184 students during the first administration, but 16 students were reported absent by the second visit to the schools), we readministered the instrument to the same students, the data collected from the two administrations were subjected to correlation analysis and a reliability coefficient of 0.88 was obtained. We then proceeded to collect actual data for the study, it took about three weeks, and the analysis was carried out using IBM-SSPS version 23. In the data coding process, not difficult was scored 1, moderately difficult = 2, very difficult = 3. For each respondent, and for each concept, it was then possible to get a difficulty score that ranged from 1 to 3. The mean rank method which involved a two step-process was adopted. This resulted in ranking the highest mean score as the most difficult and the lowest mean score as the least difficult topic as perceived by physics students in the sample. The topic ranked as the most difficult was “refractive indices”.

2.3. Participants and Instrument—Phase 2

Having determined the perceived difficult concepts, we proceeded to the second phase of the study where we experimented with the potency of CTCA on the most difficult concept. A mixed-methods design was adopted, the quantitative aspect was quasi-experimental while the qualitative aspect was through a semi-structured interview. Two schools in Nigeria, located in different education districts were selected for this phase to prevent students in each group from interacting with one another. The control group, which had 96 students (42 females and 54 males), was taught using the conventional lecture method, while the experimental group which had 109 students (65 females and 44 males) was taught using the CTC approach. Senior secondary school 1 (the equivalent of American 10th grade) was considered appropriate because, by the structure of the syllabus and the general school calendar, the students have not been exposed to the concept. The mean age of the students was 13 years.

Data were collected using achievement test in refractive indices (ATRI). The instrument (multiple choice) had 30 district items, each item had three distractors and one key. About 75% of the items in the instrument were generated from WASSCE past questions (2015–2020) while the remaining 25% were sourced from two commonly used physics textbooks. The items were evenly distributed across the cognitive process dimension [75] and all items carried equal score weight. Forty-five minutes was the allotted time, amounting to one and half minutes per question. The validity evidence (face, content, and construct validity) for the instrument was established by the same expert team in phase one. At the last stage of the validation exercise, we administered the instruments to 20 s year students (SS2) in two schools who had been taught the refractive indices. After completing the tests, we initiated a discussion with the students, seeking their views about the questions and the time given (30 min.). Overall, their comments reflected that the questions were clear, but the time given was relatively short. It was based on this trail-testing feedback, which the validation team found to be reasonable, that we adjusted the allotted time to 45 min. A reliability coefficient of 0.76 was obtained for the instrument using the split-half procedure.

2.4. Treatment Procedure and Data Collection

The physics teacher of the experimental group was trained in the use of CTCA and after the training which lasted for four weeks, three sessions of micro-teaching exercise were held. At the end of the third practice, he was judged to be fluent in the use of the approach by the research team (coefficient of congruence measured during end-of-training assessment was 0.92). Students in the control group were taught using the conventional lecture method, while in the experimental class, the teacher taught refractive indices following the five-step CTCA protocol at every lesson (see www.ctcapproach.com for details). The treatment lasted four weeks.

The steps are as follows:

As pre-lesson activity, the teacher informed the students ahead of time (about a week ahead) of the topic to be learned in class, in this case refractive indices, and requested that they (a) reflect on indigenous knowledge or cultural practices and beliefs associated with the topic or concept. The students were made aware that such reflections are to be shared with others in class when the topic is to be taught; and (b) using their mobile phones or other Internet-enabled devices, search the web for resources relating to the lesson (first technology flavor of the approach).

At the start of the lesson and after the introduction by the teacher, students were grouped into mixed ability, mixed-sex groups (10 students in a group) to share individual reflections on (a) the indigenous knowledge and cultural practices and beliefs associated with the topic; and (b) summaries of ideas obtained from web resources. All such cultural and web-based reflections were documented and presented to the whole class by the group leaders. The teacher wraps up by sharing his/her indigenous knowledge and cultural practices associated with the topic.

The teacher progresses the lesson, drawing practical examples from the immediate surroundings of the school. Such examples can be physically observed by students to make the concept real and less abstract. This is one of the “context” flavors of the approach. The teacher sprinkled lesson delivery with some content-specific humor.

As the lesson further progresses, the class was reminded of the relevance of the indigenous knowledge and cultural practices documented by the groups for meaningful understanding of the concepts. Areas of misconceptions associated with cultural beliefs were cleared by the teacher.

At the close of the lesson, the teacher sends a maximum 320-character summary of the lesson (two pages in SMS) via WhatsApp to all students. After the first lesson, student group leaders were saddled with the responsibility of composing the summaries and sending them to the WhatsApp group. This is another of the technological flavor of the approach.

Examples of cultural knowledge or practices related to refractive indices mentioned during the lessons are: “ojiji eniyan tabi igi ninu omi”—the images of people or trees as can be seen through water; "oorun akoyo”—the rising sun; “eye apeja lodo”—bird hunting sea fish; “isoro ati fowo mu eja lodo”—inability to catch a fish with bare hands; “oorun kantari”—action of the sun at mid-day (total internal reflection). Figure 3 also presents some contextual examples.

Both the experimental and control groups were subjected to a pretest before treatment and a posttest after the treatment using the same refractive indices achievement measure. It is worth noting that the two regular teachers of the experimental and control group schools were retained for this study to avoid teacher effect due to change, which may confound the results. At the beginning of the data collection exercise, we guided the teachers to inform the students that their performance in the test will not count in the school year scores and that there is no pass or fail grade attached to their performance in the test. The essence of this information was to reduce the usual tension and panic students wear while learning physics concepts and to ensure that no form of malpractice was recorded. We ensured that the classroom atmosphere was free from distractions and boredom during test administration (pretest and posttest) to increase the credibility of the data collected.

One-way ANCOVA at 0.05 confidence level was applied to the pre-test and post-test achievement scores, the pre-test scores were used as the covariate. After the posttest, 12 students from the experimental group (6 males and 6 females) were selected for interviews on their perceptions about the CTC approach. The students’ perception about CTCA interview guide (SPCIG) which had been used in an earlier study (within a similar context) was adopted. The interviews took two days and were conducted within the school premises under a quiet atmosphere. The interviews were conducted within the morning hours (9 a.m.–11 a.m.), we did so to avoid using the students’ break period (11:30 a.m.–12 noon) in order that we may have their full attention during the interview sessions. We also envisaged that by the period after midday, some of the students may already be tired and as such, not give the required concentration. Each interview session lasted about 17 min.

3. Results

On the first research question which sought to find out the topics in secondary school physics curriculum/syllabus that students find difficult to learn, data gathered were subjected to mean rank analysis. The results obtained, as shown in Table 1, reveal that refractive indices (mean difficulty score = 2.32) was perceived as the most difficult concept followed by electromagnetism and radioactivity ranking second and third with mean difficulty scores of 2.29 and 2.25, respectively. Gas laws was perceived as the least difficult concept (mean = 1.74).

For the second research question, preliminary tests showed that the data satisfied the assumptions of Shapiro–Wilk test of normality for control group: (96) = 0.98; p > 0.05 and experimental group: (109) = 0.98; p > 0.05 but did not satisfy homogeneity of variances variance (F = 14. 90; p < 0.05). However, we proceeded because the statistic employed is robust enough to accommodate the failure of one assumption. Since random assignment to experimental and control groups was not achieved, analysis of covariance was applied on the achievement scores of the students with the pre-test scores as covariate to control for any possible initial difference. The result obtained showed that students in the experimental group had a higher mean score (15.49) than their counterpart in the control group (11.97). Thus, to ascertain whether the observed difference is statistically significant and not due to error variance, the obtained result was subjected to inferential testing as shown in

Table 2. Test of significance between the control and experimental groups.

Source	Type III Sum of Squares	df	Mean Square	F	Sig.	Partial Eta Squared
Corrected Model	632.42 a	2	316.21	34.84	0.00	0.26
Intercept	2416.26	1	2416.26	266.24	0.00	0.57
Pre_Test	0.87	1	0.87	0.10	0.76	0.00
Method	612.41	1	612.41	67.48	0.00	0.25
Error	1833.27	202	9.08
Total	41,727.00	205
Corrected Total	2465.69	204

^a. R Squared = 0.26 (Adjusted R Squared = 0.25).

.

The result in Table 2 shows that at entry level, students of both groups (CTCA and Lecture method) were not significantly different from one another in terms of performance (pretest scores, p = 0.76). However, after treatment, the result showed that the experimental group significantly outperformed (F(1, 202) = 64.48; p < 0.01) the control group. Based on this result, the hypothesis which states that there will be no statistically significant difference in the achievement (mean scores) of students taught using the traditional lecture method and those taught using the culturo-techno-contextual approach is therefore rejected.

To address the third research question which sought students’ perception about the new approach (CTCA) that was used to teach them refractive indices, the highlighted responses did not only in part address the third research question, but also lent support to our logical submissions in the discussion section regarding the better performance of the experimental students as against their counterparts in the control group. The selected students were interrogated on each of the three frameworks of the approach—culture, technology, and context. Their responses were coded and interpreted with a few direct quotes presented in the results and discussion sections. Our findings revealed that the students considered each of these aspects as vital and contributive to their success in the lessons. We note particularly that the interviewees’ responses were unanimous on each of the questions asked. For example, when asked to describe how having discussions about related cultural/indigenous practices with their parents aided their understanding of the topics treated, all of the students interviewed responded that discussing their assignments with their parents was very helpful. We noted that their responses pointed in three directions (i.e., three themes emerged)

Quick recall of information: The students’ responses showed that the information they got from their parents was helpful in remembering what they have learnt in class as the cultural explanations and examples are within the reach of the students. Although some of the students reported that the assistance they got from either parents or any of their elders at home was a mere mention of possible cultural/indigenous practice related to the topic to be learnt in class, some other students (perhaps, those whose parents have some background in science) reported their parents went a step further in relating the cultural or indigenous practice to the topics. For example, Sedotin (pseudonym), a 14-year-old girl said: ‘Sir, the way our teacher taught this topic is good. I wish our chemistry teacher could also teach us that way. What I enjoyed most was the culture knowledge. My daddy was the one who told me that is because of refraction that we cannot use our hands to catch fish in the river. Even though you are seeing the fish.’ We suspected that Sedotin’s father was able to provide such example because he is a fisherman and a teacher at a primary school, as contained in the demographic information that she provided under parent’s occupation.

Our understanding here is that the impact of the interactions that took place between the students and their parents in relation to their study corroborates the assumption of the theory of social constructivism which expresses that learning is typically a social process. Experts have also noted that whatever students learn in a relaxed environment (which they would have enjoyed at home) usually stays in their long-term memory [39]. Given that most of the students would have completed the first leg of the pre-lesson assignment by watching a YouTube video related to the topic before engaging their parents, as they interact with their parents, at least two active learning boosters were therefore set into motion. (1) Diligence: knowing that he or she would have to use the knowledge gained from the video to set the discussion in motion, the student is most likely to pay rapt attention to the contents of the video. This would be very necessary, in particular, for parents with little or no science background. (2) Revision or repetition: by this interaction, the student is equally reviewing what he or she has just learnt and connecting it with the cultural/indigenous practice.

Mental scaffolding: From the students’ submissions, we deduced that having learnt from parents at home, it was easier for the students to use the existing information (current cognitive structure) they acquired about the topic to process and organize the incoming ones in class. This, according to Ausubel’s theory of advanced organizer, promotes meaningful learning. One of the respondents for example said: ‘Sir, I like the method. It makes the lesson lively and for me, I really enjoyed the group discussion because I learnt many things from my friends. I found the group activities more interesting because I gained more knowledge from other people. And we participated well by bringing all what we have watched on YouTube. Even though I was not the group leader I learnt more.’ When learners are able to direct their attention to what is important in incoming information by highlighting the relationships and providing a reminder about relevant prior knowledge, the resultant effect is usually meaningful learning [7].

Active engagement in class: CTCA being a student-centered approach affords the students ample opportunity to take charge of their own learning. Most of the interviewees responded that based on their findings from home (although, some of them added that the YouTube information also contributed to active engagement in class), they were able to participate in class discussions and even attempted to answer questions unlike in their previous lessons in physics. An example of the students’ submissions reads thus: “Having to make findings about a new topic before it will be taught in class by going online to watch videos and asking my parents for indigenous knowledge related to the topic gave me a whole lot of courage when I got to class to answer questions. I found the indigenous knowledge to be the most interesting and helpful part. In the sense that it helped me to relate what we learnt in class to real life experience, it also helped me to know what those things stand for and their usefulness.” Several studies have acknowledged that when students actively engage in learning process, particularly in science, it improves their sense of belonging and science identity, consolidates their learning achievements, enhances both students and knowledge retention in science, and reduces learning anxiety which retards students’ achievements and deters them from pursuing science and science-related courses later in life [2,37,76,77,78].

4. Discussion of Results

On research question one, although not in the same rank order, our findings tally with the results of previous studies. For example, the results in Table 1 partly agrees with that of ref [30] in their survey of difficult concepts in physics among secondary school students in Osun State, Nigeria. They found simple harmonic motion which ranked 6th in the current study as the most difficult concept. This variation in rank order may be attributed to the wide difference in the sample size of the two studies. Findings of the current study also share semblance with ref [5], who found electromagnetism as the third most difficult concept among 830 physics students in Lagos and Ogun states, Nigeria. The similarities between findings of previous studies and the current endeavor provide a stronger argument for the need for a viable and lasting intervention to ease students’ learning difficulties in physics. On a general note, it can be observed that the first ten perceived most difficult concepts as found in this study remain to be difficult for students in Nigeria to learn irrespective of time and space. Whilst it was not specified within the scope of the study, we considered it gainful to report that the data generated from section C of the DCPQ clearly reflect that teachers’ choice of teaching method, lack of or inadequate learning materials, and lack of opportunities to learn topped the lists of the factors influencing students’ perception of the difficulty of physics concepts.

The second research question sought to experiment the potency of CTCA. Our findings revealed the CTC approach as a viable teaching and learning tool to break the barriers to meaningful learning of refractive indices. The output in Table 2 shows that at least 25% of the success of the students in the experimental group can be accounted for by the approach that was adopted by the teacher. While this may not sound so big, our experiences with students in the physics class confirm to us that whatever tool that can take away a quarter of the problems that students have with learning the subject is one to hold onto until a better one is found and established. This result agrees with the findings of [33,60,62,66,67,68,79]. These studies experimented with CTCA in biology, chemistry, and ICT and in no one was the partial eta squared value less than 54%. While it is clear that there are other factors which also contributed to the students’ success in the previous and current study, it will not be out of place to conjecture the possible active ingredients in the CTC approach that are advancing the observed meaningful learning.

We hypothesized four mechanisms of action of CTCA in the learning process that can explain the better performance of the experimental group. These mechanisms are related to its components (culture, technology, and context) and implementation steps. In implementing the “culturo” part of CTCA, the teacher asked students to document indigenous knowledge and cultural practices related to refractive indices and to watch related videos on YouTube. In carrying out this task, students were able to see that their indigenous knowledge and cultural practices do not count for naught and some, directly or indirectly, explained mechanisms associated with refractive indices around them based on such knowledge. This aspect of CTCA also helped students to connect their lessons to their indigenous knowledge or cultural practices, showing the relevance of their ways of life and daily practices to what they are been taught in the science classroom and as such, demystifying the contents. This understanding is well flagged by Nkrumah’s ethnophilosophy, one of the philosophical bases of CTCA. Further, students in the experimental group come to class already primed with some baseline indigenous knowledge/cultural practices and the YouTube videos to learn the new topics. For such students, learning a new topic is like swimming down a stream. The prior information acquired by these students can be likened to a raft to which the learner clings as tool to swim down the stream.

The videos from YouTube would have played a great role in improving the understanding of the students. The possible learning benefits which accrue from using technology in teaching and learning of science concepts have been well established in the literature [23,39,40]. Moreover, today’s learners are more likely to show interest and find pleasure in any activity that involves the computer and the Internet [77]. Hence, they are called digital natives and after all, whatever pleases, teaches effectively. Corroborating our conjecture are the responses of two students during the interview.

Sir, the aspect of the that I found most helpful is the online videos. Before this, I am always online because my daddy does share data for me often. So, I like going online very well to chat with my friends and I watch online movies very well. Chika (pseudonym), female, 13 years old.

For me, the YouTube videos really helped me to understand the topics very well because even after the class I still go back to watch videos again. My elder brother already taught me how to download the videos. So, I can always go back to them without using my data. I also enjoyed the group discussions too because I do contribute very well. Olatide (pseudonym), female, 13 years old.

The social interaction that comes along with the implementation of CTCA is another factor to examine. We see Vygotsky’s theory of social constructivism also provides a strong base for the better performance of the CTCA groups. Before any lesson, students were directed to interact with parents or any adult on cultural practices or local knowledge related to the content and to watch related videos on YouTube (technology-mediation to which teachers and learners are increasingly dependent). On getting to the classroom, the students shared these findings among themselves. This way, the students learn from interactions with parents and through YouTube videos (more knowledgeable other—MKO). They also learn through interaction and scaffolding with peers and gradually, they move from their zone of can do without help to a higher zone of proximal development (ZPD) espoused by Vygotsky [70,74]. Ref [73,80] also demonstrated the importance of prior knowledge to learning new concepts. All the pre-lesson activities that the CTCA students were tasked with no doubt would have imparted their learning. Leaning on Ausubel’s postulation, these activities serve as advance organizers that steer students to their zone of proximal development (ZPD) which has been theorized to catalyze learning.

Another of the CTCA components which logically explains the better performance of students in the CTCA groups even though the analysis conducted already attributed about the 25% of the students’ gains in achievement to the teaching strategy employed, is the use of contextual examples in the CTCA class. According to ref [39], the locational context is the unique identity of every school, and it plays a strong role in the examples and local case studies for science lessons. Some experts have also argued that through the use of relevant human examples, even upper primary school students can understand basic evolutionary concepts in biology. Further, they argued that using relevant examples promotes student engagement in the classroom and explicitly creates an interactive learning environment. Thus, the use of physical objects for illustration in class affords learners a context that enables them to express and expand their cognitive constructs of learning science [54,56].

The third research question sought participants’ perception about CTCA as an approach to learning physics. The interview questions sought each of the interviewees’ views about each of the component of the approach—the cultural aspect, asking parents or any adult for related indigenous knowledge; the technology-mediated aspect, going online to watch related lesson videos; the contextual aspect, using examples that are within school location and immediate environments of the students; the group discussions; and the presentations by the group leaders. Four of the twelve students interviewed affirmed that the group discussions and the presentations by the group leaders were the most interesting part of the approach and helped them to learn better than in their usual regular physics class. The perception of these students can largely be explained by differences in how best the individual students learn. As opined by ref [40], learning style theorists have within the limits of their studies explained that some students learn better by what they hear (aural learners). Such a category of students find pleasure in and are able to acquire more information through discussions and presentations.

Nine of the interviewees confirmed to us that they find the cultural and online video bits very interesting and helpful to their learning of the treated topics. As explained in the earlier paragraphs, for some students, this was their first concrete experience of how relevant their ways of life are to school/classroom learning. They were convinced beyond doubt science is not entirely abstract as might have been painted. Over time, if these students continue to learn this way, their perception about images of a scientist (white only) as often shown in textbooks may likely be distorted in ways that will improve their self-concept as potential scientist and ultimately boost scientific literacy in our society. The disposition of the students to watch lesson videos online had also been earlier attributed to increasing dependency of all (teacher and students) to the Internet in finding solutions to daily problems, particularly the young ones.

5. Conclusions and Recommendation

While the interest of the researchers is not to generalize the results of phase one and two of this study to the entire population on the account of the scope and limitations of the study, we can infer based on the study design and sample size that the findings in the phase one of this study surpass the limitations of the previous studies and holds a stronger validity evidence on concepts difficulty in physics in Nigeria secondary schools. It therefore provides physics teachers and curriculum experts a newer and balanced view of where the shoe pinches the students. We further submitted that our findings in phase two provide further empirical evidence for the potency of culturally and contextually responsive teaching approaches (the CTCA in this instance) as being capable of promoting science teaching and learning in the digital world and among scientifically backward nations. The study provides physics teachers in Nigeria, Africa, and other regions a new tool for helping their students to break the barriers to meaningful learning of difficult concepts. Teaching with CTCA also serves as a means of preservation of culture and engrains the relevance of culture and technology in science teaching and learning.

Within the limits of this study, we hypothesized that its findings will be of general interest to science educators across the globe as it focused on promoting science teaching and learning especially in Africa, where scientific literacy is still far behind other regions. Thus, we recommend a replication of this study in other subjects and concepts and on a larger scale, possibly for a longer period beyond four weeks. We foresee that if this approach is considered as another tool among secondary school science teachers, it will over time, promote unity and inclusion for global scientific literacy as it is currently being campaigned in science education communities around the world. Science and technology educators whose research interest borders around equity and sociocultural issues will also find this study to be of great value.

6. Ethical Considerations

We sought permission from the authorities of the schools (proprietors of private and principals of public schools) through letters of introduction which bore the details and purposes of the study. The letter clearly expressed the schools’/students’ freedom to participate or not, inform their parents about the exercise, and to opt out of the study at any time without fear of any consequence. At all times that we had direct contact with the students under the supervision of the officers assigned by the schools to work with us, we ensured a relaxed and boredom-free atmosphere. Students who were interviewed were pre-informed and their consent to record the conversations was equally sought. With the permission of the authorities of both schools and the support of the regular teachers, four make-up classes (80 min each) were organized for the students to cater for the topics in the syllabus for that term that were missed during the treatment phase.