Blending formative assessment with metacognitive scaffolding strategies: Its effect on students’ achievement and self-regulation skills in chemistry

Abstract

The study was undertaken to examine the effect of blended formative assessment with metacognitive scaffolding strategies on students’ achievement and self-regulation skills in learning Chemistry with focus to secondary schools in Addis Ababa City, Ethiopia. The study adopted pretest posttest quasi-experimental design. Three groups were involved in the study, two experimental and one comparison groups. The experimental groups practiced the formative assessment and blended formative assessment with metacognitive scaffolding strategies respectively, whereas for the comparison group the existing instruction were implemented. The sample, consisting of 132 eleven grade students, was taken by using the multistage random sampling technique from three secondary schools. The Chemistry Achievement Tests (CAT) and the Chemistry Self-Regulation Skills Questionnaire (CSRSQ) were the instruments for data collection. The internal consistency of the CAT was obtained using Kudder Richardson formula 20(KR-20) and the reliability index obtained was 0.79. The reliability coefficient for CSRSQ was estimated using Cronbach alpha and its value was found to be 0.76. For the pre- and post-tests’ data analysis, descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (Oneway ANOVA) tests were implemented to compare the scores obtained from the experimental and comparison groups. The main finding of one-way ANOVA indicated that there was a significant effect on students’ achievement [F (2,129) = 13.32; p<0.001] and their self-regulation skills [? (2,129) = 12.38; p<0.001]. Moreover, effect size estimate was used to provide a strong validation on the variation between the three groups for the measure of students’ achievement and selfregulation skills in learning chemistry. Recommendations were made to promote the use of blended formative assessment with metacognitive scaffolding strategies aiming at the improvement of student achievement and self-regulation skills in learning Chemistry at secondary schools.