Educationis the process by which an individual is encouraged and enabled to developfully his or her potentialities. It may also serve the purpose of equipping theindividual, with what is necessary to be a productive member of the society.
Anindividual acquires and develop knowledge and skills through teaching andlearning. Operational DefinitionsGraphic Organizers:The researcher constructs various graphic organizers on the Science topics ofclass VIIth. The graphic organizers included various types e.g.hierarchy diagrams, cycle maps, spider maps, sequence diagrams, time lines,cause and effect chart, venn diagram.Academic Achievement inScience: Academic achievement refers to theacademic performance in a particular subject. In the present study, it refersto the mean gained scores by the students obtained in the achievement test inScience. This test was an investigator made test covering the lessons chosenfor this particular study.
Delimitations of theStudy: The study was concerned with: a) Thestudy was delimited to Government schools of Jalandhar affiliated to PunjabSchool Education Board only.b) Thestudy was delimited to VIIth class students only.c) Followingtopics of science as prescribed in the syllabus of VIIth class byPunjab School Education Board were taken as subject matter (a) Nutrition inPlants (b) Nutrition in Animals (c) Acids, Bases and Salts (d) Electric Currentand its Effects (e) Our Forests Objective: Toinvestigate the significance of difference in achievement in Science of thegroups taught through using graphic organizers strategy and conventionalteaching strategy.Hypothesis: Therewill be no significant difference in achievement in Science of the groupstaught through graphic organizers strategy and traditional teaching.Design:The design of the study was experimental in nature. Randomized groups pretest-post test design was used. Sample:Random sampling technique was followed to select the sample of the study.
Thestudy was conducted over a total of 120 (60 experimental group and 60 controlgroup) students of VIIth class of Government Schools of Jalandhar,affiliated to P.S.E.
B, Mohali.Tools:Following tools were used in the present study:a) Achievementtest in Science for 7th class students (developed by theinvestigator). b) Graphicorganizers strategy based lesson plans (developed by the investigator).Procedure:The present study was conducted to determine the effect of teaching through useof graphic organizers on achievement in science of VIIth classschool students.
For the study, government schools of Jalandhar district werechosen randomly, each with two sections of VIIth class. In the firststep, two groups one as experimental group and the other as control group wereassigned by matching them on the basis of their age group (10-14 years), who isnot taking any external tuition, coming regularly to school and havingapproximately equal marks background. Sixty students were included in eachgroup. In the second step, achievement test in science of VIIthclass (developed by the investigator) was administered as pre-test.
In thethird step, the experimental group was taught through using graphic organizers(with different graphic organizers concerned with the syllabus of VIIthclass prepared by investigator) for a period of 20 days and for the same periodcontrol group was taught with the help of traditional method. Both the groupswere taught by the investigator herself to control other extraneous variables.In fourth step achievement test in science was administered to both the groupsas post test.
The gain score (Post test scores – Pre test scores) were used asachievement in science for both the groups.Result: t-ratiowas used to check the significance of difference in the achievement in scienceof the experimental and control groups. Table: t – ratio of gainmean scores in Science between experimental and control groups Method Used N Mean of gain score S.D. t-value Experimental group 60 5.37 1.85 4.61* Control group 60 3.
85 1.74 *Significant at 0.01level of significance.The above table valueshows that the mean of gain score in achievement of science for the experimentaland control group were 5.37 and 3.
85 respectively. The t-value between thesetwo groups was found to be 4.61 which in comparison to the table value wasfound to be significant at 0.01 level of significance.
The result indicatesthat the performance of experimental group which wass taught by using graphicorganizers method was more effective than that of control group which wastaught by traditional method. This leads to therejection of hypothesis which states that ‘There will be no significantdifference in achievement in science of the groups taught through using graphicorganizers and traditional teaching.’ Educational Implications: Theresult of the study shows that achievement of students in science subject canbe improved by using graphic organizers. Basedon the result obtained, it is therefore suggested that teachers should beencouraged to use graphic organizers strategy for teaching science in schools.It is the responsibility of educational institutions to acquaint their scienceteachers through seminars and participation in research workshops aboutdifferent teaching strategies.This finding is wellsupported by the studies conducted by Griffin & Malone (1995), Kaur (2004),Shihusa & Keraro (2009), Slicker (2013) and Verma (2016).
