Comparison of Learning Cycle and Traditional Teaching Approaches on Students’ Understanding of Selected Concepts in Electricity

Abstract

Concept development has been the subject of ongoing debate among educators, academics and policy makers over the years. There have been many studies that sought to investigate the effectiveness of teaching methods in helping students develop and understand concepts in different subjects. The purpose of this study was to compare the learning cycle approach which is based on the constructivist theory to the traditional approach on senior secondary school students’ understanding of selected concepts in direct current electricity. Two intact science classes from two of the six senior secondary schools offering General Science in the New Juaben Municipality were randomly sampled using the computer generated random numbers to participate in the study. In all 101 students participated in the study. The experimental group consisted of 59 students and the control group had 42 students. The main instrument used for data collection was Current Electricity Concept Achievement Test (CECAT) which comprised of 30 multiple choice items. The t-test for independent and dependent samples and linear regression were used to analyze data. The results of the study showed that the experimental group which was instructed using the learning cycle approach performed better on the posttest compared to the control group who were instructed using the traditional approach. The results also revealed that the learning cycle approach was more effective for teaching most of the interrelated concepts and a number of different aspects of the selected concepts in direct current electricity than the traditional approach.