THE USE OF THE FIRST PRINCIPLE APPROACH TO ENABLE SELECTED S.H.S. STUDENTS DEDUCE THE LIMITING REAGENTS IN CHEMICAL REACTIONS

ABSTRACT 

An action research was conducted by providing an alternative method, first principle approach, to enable students deduce limiting reagents in chemical reactions. Purposive sampling technique was employed to select 50 SHS 2 science students at Sunyani Senior High School in the Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana for the study. This sampling technique was used because the participants needed to be students who had just completed a course in stoichiometry and chemical equations in chemistry. The instruments used to gather data in this study were questionnaire and tests. The internal consistency of the items on the instruments was verified by examining the coefficient alpha of the various items in the instrument using the scores from the pilot-testing to determine the reliability. The overall reliability coefficient alpha for each of the two (2) test instruments constructed was found to be 0.70. After recording the scores from the pre-intervention and post-intervention tests, the SPSS version 16.0 computer programming for analysing data was used to analyse the scores. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the data in terms of standard deviation, frequencies, percentages and bar charts. The findings of the study indicate that the first principle approach helped the students to deduce the limiting reactants in chemical reactions better than other approaches. This is evident by the fact that 80% of the students scored at least 50% of the marks in the post-intervention test, after they have been introduced to the first principle approach, as against only 14% students scoring at least 50% of the marks in the pre-intervention test. It is recommended that teachers consider the use of this first principle approach during instruction for the benefit of all students. It is also suggested that further research be done on this topic by other researchers in other places of the country.