NON-SCIENTIFIC BELIEF MISCONCEPTIONS ON SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN PHYSICS

Abstract

This study employed a survey design to investigate the influence of nonscientific belief misconceptions on secondary school students’ achievement in physics. One hundred senior secondary school II physics students drawn from ten co-educational public schools in Ika Local Government Area of AkwaIbom State using simple and purposive sampling techniques, responded to the researcher-made instrument validated for data collection. Results obtained using the t-test of independent means at P.05 for df= 98 showed that there was significant influence of biblical accounts of formations of rainbow, thunderstorms and floatation phenomena on students’ achievement in physics with continual distortion of scientific views in disfavor of female students. From the findings, the study recommended that preachers and teachers of the Christian Bible should be literate in the basic science of physics so that they could espouse both biblical accounts and scientific views of science-related phenomena to a balanced and well informed membership.