STUDENTS COGNITIVE STYLE, COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT AND COGNITIVE DEMANDS OF SECONDARY SCHOOL PHYSICS CURRICULUM AS FACTORS AFFECTING ACHIEVEMENT IN PHYSICS

'I'hc purpose ol'the Study was to determine whether there is any relationship
between mcasurcs of student's cognitive style, cognitive developrncnt,
cogni tivc dcmulds o 1' secondary school (S.S) physics curriculum and
sludetlt's achicvcincnt in physics. Four research questions wcre gcncratcd
and Sour hypotheses formulated to guide the st~idyT. he design of the study
was correlational. The population of the study was 2290 SSll physics
studentsin Kogi State of Nigeria for 2000/200 1 academic session. Purposive
and non cquivalcnt stralificd random sampling tcchniqucs were used to
obtain a slumplc 01'524 students liom six education /.ones in the State. ];our
instruments were used for data collection. 'I'hcy include Group Embedded
Figures Test (GEFT) h r measure of cognitive style, Science Reasoning
Task (SR'Ts j 1-kr measure of cognitive development , Curriculum Analysis
'I'axonomy (CAT) lor determination ol'cognitivc demands of the curriculum
and physics Achievcmcnt Tcst (PAT) for the deternlination of' students'
achievement in physics . GEFT and SRTs \yere adopted and adapted
respectively in the study for data collection. Curriculum Analysis 'l'asonomy
(CAT) and physics Achievement Test (PAT) constructed by the researcher
wcrc flee and content validated using 14 physics educators two of' whom
wcre evaluators. CAT has inter -rater reliability coefficient of -89 and mean
inter -rater scale of 3.4. PA?' has inter - rater reliability coefficient of .9 1,
, mean inter -rater scale of 3.4 and internal consistency rcliability coefficient
.of' .X3. Muliiple regression and correlation statistical tcchniqucs were uscd
fbr data analysis to answer the research cluestionsand to test the hypotheses.
Major findings from the study among others include:
1. Measures of' student s' cognitive Style and cognitive tasks were
significant predictors of'students achievement in physics.
2. Only nmsure of students' cognitive style was a signilkant predictor of
student s' achievement in high order cognitive demand qucsrions in
physics.
3. Mcasure of students' formal reasoning was neither a significant predictor
of students' achievement in physics nor student's achievement in higher
order cognitive demand questions in physics and there is therefore a
mis~natchb etween the dependent and the independent variables.