AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY TO ASSESS THE MOTIVATIONAL TECHNIQUES USED BY TEACHERS IN THE TEACHING OF CHEMISTRY

The purpose of the study was to enquire the effects of motivational techniques used by teacher on studentsʹ learning in the subject of chemistry at B.SC level. The objectives of the study were: 1) to identify the motivational techniques used during the teaching of chemistry, 2) to investigate the effectiveness of traditional method of teaching and selective motivational techniques on the learning achievements of students, and 3) to compare the degree of effectiveness of teaching with motivational techniques and through traditional method on learning achievements of students in the subject of chemistry. The motivational techniques used during instruction were arousing interest, competition, curiosity, feedback and reward. For arousing interest varieties of teaching methods such as demonstration, presentation, group work and audiovisual aids like overhead projector transparencies and models were applied. Quiz activities were used for competition in groups. Curiosity as a motivational technique was used by means of project activity assigned to the groups and a core question about the relevant topic was displayed before the class at the beginning of the lesson presentation regularly. The findings showed that the difference between the two means were significant. It means that the experimental group performed better. Hence the hypothesis: "there is no statistically significant difference in the learning achievements of students of control and experimental groups in terms of mean score gains on post test were rejected. Following were the major conclusions of the study. 1) Learning achievements of control group after teaching by traditional method were also improved but average performance was less than experimental group. 2) Learning achievements of experimental group after using motivational techniques in post-test were better than pre test. 3) The students of experimental group who were taught with the help of motivational techniques performed better than the students of control group who were taught by using traditional method. On the basis of findings and conclusions following recommendations were made; A variety of instructional methods may be used in order to arouse interest of the students in chemistry. Well-prepared demonstrations may be used by the chemistry teachers and studentsʹ involvement may be ensured in demonstration activities. Group work activities may be arranged by the teachers to enhance the potential of students in the subject of Chemistry/Science. To create interest and to gain better results of the students various A.V aids may be used.