The Effect of Laboratory Training Model of Teaching and Traditional Method on Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Skills-Components of Achievement, Total Achievement and Retention Level in Chemistry.

The present study aimed at finding the effectiveness of the Laboratory Training Model of Teaching (LTM) and comparing it with the Traditional methods of teaching chemistry to seventh standard students. It strived to determine whether the (LTM) method in chemistry would be significantly more effective than the Traditional method in respect to the male and female students' overall as well as component-based achievement and retention in chemistry. Four homogenous groups of seventh standard students from two English medium primary schools in Mysore in India were selected adopting purposive sampling technique. Thirty students were selected from each class and hence 60 male and female students from school A and 60 from school B formed the sample of the study. Test of Higher Mental Ability in Science (THMAS) was used to determine the homogeneity of the participants. The 120 students of all the experimental and control groups were given the post-test at the end of the experimental work to both the experimental and control groups to measure their terminal behavior. The researcher-constructed and validated achievement test of chemistry was administered to the subjects in experimental and control groups at the end of the instruction to measure their achievement in chemistry. After a gap of one month, the delayed post-test for achievement in chemistry was administered to the experimental and the control groups to determine the retention level of the students. The statistical technique used to analyze the obtained research data was the independent sample t-test. The findings of the study indicated that as far as the overall achievement and retention in chemistry is concerned, the (LTM) method of teaching chemistry were much more effective than the Traditional method. As for the components of achievement and retention: comprehension, application, and skills in chemistry, the (LTM) method was more effective than the Traditional method except knowledge component. But the component of knowledge in achievement and retention in Traditional method was more effective than (LTM) method in chemistry.