Effect of inquiry-based teaching approach on Islamic Primary School pupils’ academic performance in the concepts of forces and energy at Old-Tafo Municipality

Abstract

The study examined the effect of inquiry-based teaching approach on the academic performance of Islamic primary school pupils’ in the concepts of Forces and Energy within the Old-Tafo Municipality. It was grounded in the observation that pupils’ science performance in the municipality has historically been poor. These persistent and fluctuating outcomes are attributed to the use of ineffective teaching strategies that fail to promote active learning and learner engagement. To investigate this issue, the study adopted a quasi-experimental, pre-test-post-test one-group time series design. The target population comprised 2,015 Islamic primary school pupils enrolled in 13 public and private Islamic basic schools across the municipality. The sample consisted of 125 primary 5 pupils from Alzhariya school “A” and Alzhariya school “B”. The study employed a purposive sampling and Simple random lottery method to select the schools and the streams in the schools, and an Intact group from the chosen stream from the selected school was used. Test and structured interviews were used as instruments to collect and analyse quantitative data from the participants. A 60 multiple-choice question was used for the Test, while 8 structured interview questions were used to collect data from 20 sub-samples. The study was guided by three research questions and tested two null hypotheses tested at a 0.05 level of significance. Descriptive statistics, specifically mean and standard deviation, were used to address the research questions, while the hypotheses were analysed using the t-test. The findings revealed, among other outcomes, that the inquiry-based teaching strategy significantly enhanced pupils’ academic performance in Islamic primary schools in the areas of Forces and Energy. Based on the findings, it was recommended, among others, that the Old-Tafo Municipal directorate must encourage the use of conceptual and inquiry-based learning across subjects, including Arabic, to foster critical thinking and reduce over-reliance on rote memorisation. Additionally, the Old-Tafo Municipal Education Directorate should organise regular hands-on professional development workshops to equip science teachers and enhance their pedagogical and content knowledge of the concept of forces, thereby improving their academic performance.