Academic Performance of Chemistry Majors in Selected Chemistry Courses: Input for the Licensure Examination Preparation

Abstract

Students’ achievement in the field of science depends on many related factors of teaching and learning particularly in chemistry subjects. Thus, it may be helpful to determine objectively whether or not teachers, students’ and school factors are influencing the academic performance of the students and the importance of which as input to chemistry licensure examination. Descriptive statistics were used. The multivariate analysis on the form of principal components analysis (PCA) and general linear model (GLM) were also used. Female respondents comprised the majority. Parent’s highest educational levels were college graduate, and most of the students came from State Universities and Colleges. Most of the students were members of school organizations, non-recipient of scholarship; and many of them were indulged in extra-curricular activities. Generally, learning style did not influence academic performance. Among the teaching strategies which were favored by the students was lecture and discussion. Students performed best in Organic Chemistry but they had low Chemistry achievement index. Recipient of a scholarship grant and attitude towards Chemistry were individually significant. Instructional materials and the library sources were not significant predictors of chemistry achievement. Further research is needed to explore the problem on a large sample from more scattered geographical regions. Keywords – Chemistry, students achievement, learning styles, instructional materials, teaching strategies, descriptive design, Philippines