INVESTIGATING THE INFLUENCE OF COVID-19 ETHICS ON STUDENTS’ INTEREST IN LEARNING CHEMISTRY

<doi>10.24250/jpe/SI/2023/JNN/SCN/</doi>

Abstract

This study discusses the influence of COVID-19 ethics on students’ interest in learning chemistry. Five research questions and one null hypothesis guided the study. A descriptive survey research design was used to carry out this study. The population for this study consists of 2,644 chemistry Students in the 19 public secondary schools in Awka South Local Government Area of Anambra state. A sample size of 80 chemistry students was used for the study. The simple random sampling method was used to select eight (8) public secondary schools in Awka South Local Government Area. Therefore, 10 chemistry students were selected from each of the eight secondary schools. Twenty (20) item structured questionnaires on a four-point rating scale developed by the researchers were used for data collection. The instrument was validated by two experts. To determine the internal consistency of the instrument, the Cronbach alpha formula was used and a reliability coefficient of 0.87 was obtained. After the administration of the instrument to the respondents, the data obtained were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research question and z-test to test the null hypothesis at the significance level of 0.05. The findings of the study revealed that social distancing, use of face masks, regular washing of hands, use of hand sanitizers and restriction of movement are common COVID-19 ethics. Also, COVID-19 negatively affected students’ chemistry learning and influences students’ interest to a high extent. It was shown that COVID-19 ethics influenced more of male students’ interest than their female counterparts as there was a significant difference between the male and female chemistry students on COVID-19 ethics on student interest in favour of the males. Thus, providing enough lesson time and provision of ICT and e-learning facilities are possible ways to improve students’ interest in learning chemistry during the COVID-19 era.