Design and trial of activity – based approach and materials on acids, bases and indicators for improving teaching and learning of chemistry in Tanzanian secondary schools

This study was about design and trial of activity-based materials on acids, based and indicators for improving teaching and learning of Chemistry in Tanzanian secondary schools. Specific objectives of the study were to; design activity-based materials, try out the materials in classroom and perform formative evaluation before full utilization in schools as materials. The study aimed at proving or disproving the two hypotheses stated as: there is a relationship between designed activity-based materials and improved performance of Chemistry at ordinary level secondary education and teachers as well as students prefer the designed activity based materials to non-activity based materials. The study involved developmental research, which used a non-equivalent control group (NEG) pre-/post-intervention test quasi-experimental design. Two schools; the intervention school containing 95 students and the control school containing 114 students were involved in the study. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected during study. Results from the study showed that there was a relationship between students learning with designed activity-base materials and improved performance in acids, bases and indicators. Also teachers and students were found to be more interested in learning by the new approach than the traditional approach. Therefore, the materials seemed to be useful in schools, especially during the current process of implementation of competence-based curriculum in secondary schools in Tanzania.