Abstract:
The study was conducted in order to investigate the acquisition of science process kills among Senior Secondary School students in Enugu State of Nigeria. In realisation of the immense importance of science and technology, and also of the fact that without science no meaningful national development will be achieved, there was a need to carry out a study in order to find out the factors that influence the acquisition of science process skills among our senior secondary school studenta. This led to questions as to whether students actually acquired some selected skills , which process skills are necessary for learning science i n secondary schools, and if factors like sex, school location, parents' level of education and the socia-economic status of the families had effect on the acquisition of science process skills among students. After reviewing related literatures in order to sharpen the focus of the work,a survey/descriptive study was designed. The subject sample consisted of eighty (80 Senior Secondary I students. The two sexes were equally represented in the sample. The subjects were selected randomly from eight Secondary schools which were located in Abakaliki Education Zone of Enugu State. The parents of the students were given questionnaires to fill in order to elicit responses concerning home background of the atudents. The science teachers were also given questionnaires to fill in order to find out which science process skills are necessary for learning science in secondary. Four null hypotheses were tested in an attempt to answer the questions which were posed. consequently, t-test was used to test for significance of difference between mean scores of groups that were compared. Leve1 of significance was kept at 0.05. The results indicated that some of the science process skills, for instance, inferring and predicting were poorly developed in the students. School location whether urban or rural was observed to have effect on the scores of the students in the process skill tasks. The sex of the students - male or female had no influence on their acquisition of science process skills because they were found to have performed evenly in the skill tasks. However, students from families of high socio-economic statues acquired more process skills than those from families of low socio-economic status. The educational implications of the results of the study were stated, recommendations were made and suggestions were offered f or further
