UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS’ SCIENCE PROCESS SKILLS AS PREDICTOR OF ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN SCIENCE EDUCATION COURSES
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS’ SCIENCE PROCESS SKILLS AS PREDICTOR OF ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN SCIENCE EDUCATION COURSES

Summary/Abstract: In a quest to determine if science process skills significantly influence academic achievement in undergraduate science education courses, this study examined undergraduate students’ science process skills as predictor of academic achievement in science education courses. Two research questions guided the study while two hypotheses were tested at 0.05 alpha level. The predictive correlation survey design was adopted. The population of the study comprised 2720 undergraduate science education department students in Anambra State, Nigeria. A Sample size of 408 undergraduate science education students were drawn using 15% of total population in the study (2720) as postulated by Nworgu in Abumchukwu et al.,(2024b). Undergraduate Students Science Process Skills Scale (USSPSS) and 2023/2024 academic session average scores of undergraduate students’ science education courses were instruments used for data collection. The instruments were validated by three experts. The reliability of the USSPSS was established using Cronbach alpha method and reliability coefficients of 0.73 was found. The two instruments were used as a method for data collection. Coefficient R and R2 were used to answer research questions while regression ANOVA (linear and multiple) were used to test the hypotheses. The findings from the results revealed that a low positive predictive value exist between Undergraduate students’ science process skills (USSPS) and their academic achievement in science education courses. However, undergraduate science process skills (USSPS) is not a significant predictor of the students’ academic achievement in science education courses. More so, a low positive predictive value exist between undergraduate students’ science process skills (USSPS) and the students’ academic achievement as moderated by gender in science education courses. Thus, undergraduate science process skill is not a significant predictor of the academic achievement of male and female undergraduate students in science education courses. From the findings, recommendations and conclusions were made.

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