Effects of Improvised Materials on Students’ Achievement and Retention of the Concept of Radioactivity

This paper is an empirical study aimed at finding out the effect of improvisedmaterial on students’ academic achievement and retention on the concept ofradioactivity. The study adopted the pretest post test non-equivalent controlgroup design and was carried out in Calabar Education Zone, Cross RiverState Nigeria. A total of two hundred and forty seven (247) SeniorSecondary School III Physics students took part in the study. The Analysis ofCovariance (ANCOVA), Multiple Analysis (MCA) and t-test were used toanalyze the data. The results of the study showed a significant difference inacademic achievement between the experimental and control groups infavour of the experimental group, a significant difference in the meanacademic achievement between the male and the female students in favour of the male students and a significant difference in the retention between theexperimental and control groups in favour of the experimental group. Thestudy recommend among others the use of improvised material in theteaching of physics where the accredited ones are lacking