Students-Centered Laboratory Activities and Academic Performance in Physics in Oruk Anam Local Government Area, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria.

This study investigated students-centered laboratory activities on students' academic performance in Practical Physics in Oruk Anam Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Two research questions and two corresponding hypotheses guided the study. A quasi-experimental research design involving pre-test and post-test non-equivalent experimental and control groups was adopted. The population of the study comprised 2,205 Senior Secondary School II (SS II) students from the 15 public secondary schools in the study area. A sample of 116 SS II students offering Physics was selected using the purposive sampling technique. Data were collected using a researcher-developed instrument titled Physics Performance Test (PPT). The instrument was validated by two experts in educational research, while its reliability was established using the Kuder-Richardson Formula 21 (KR-21), which yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.72. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, whereas the hypotheses were tested using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) at the 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that students taught Physics using student-centered laboratory activities performed significantly better than those taught using the discussion method. The study also found no significant difference between the mean performance scores of male and female students exposed to student-centered laboratory activities, indicating that the instructional approach was equally effective across gender. Based on these findings, it was recommended that educational stakeholders, including school administrators and education authorities, organize regular seminars, workshops, and professional development programmes to equip Physics teachers with the knowledge and skills required for the effective implementation of student-centered laboratory activities in secondary schools.