Impact of Systematic Assessment of Instruction on Secondary School Students' Physics Achievement at Cognitive Level of Knowledge

The study examined empirically the impact of systematic and unsystematic assessment of instructions, cognitive style and gender on knowledge of physics concepts among Senior Secondary Two (SS II) Students in Lagos Island Local Government Area of Lagos State, Nigeria. It made use of 120 secondary school two (SS II) students (72 males and 48 females) in a pretest-posttest non-randomized control group design in which treatment systematic assessment at two levels was crossed with two levels of cognitive style and gender. Data analysis involved analysis of covariance and graphical illustration as post-hoc measures. The results indicate that allowing systematic attributes of continuous assessment (CASS) to come into play in physics teaching has significant effect on remembering of physics concepts across all the students’ cognitive style-gender groupings. The results also indicate a significant gender-group (in support of females) in remembering of physics concepts. These results show the need for secondary school physics teachers to bring in systematic characteristic of CASS into the assessment of physics teaching. The teachers should also be more patient with male students since their knowledge of physics concepts is significantly lower than that of their female counterparts.