Physics Content Knowledge of Junior High Schools in HEI-supervised and DepEd School in the Philippines

The study was carried out to determine the literacy level, described in terms of science content knowledge along concept and application domains, and the factors that affect the content nknowledge in Physics of junior high school students. It involved a total of 256 students and 15 teachers which were selected through purposive sampling technique and total enumeration, respectively from Higher Education Institution (HEI)-supervised and DepEd schools in Camarines Sur, Philippines. The study used descriptive-inferential method and a developed questionnaire with a high degree reliability of 0.932. The data gathered was analysed using ANOVA and chi square. The results showed that the literacy level on science content knowledge along concept domain of 246 out of 256 students or 96.1% belongs to a very low mastery level; while only 10 students or 3.9% belongs to moving towards mastery.The literacy level on science content knowledge along application of 253 out of 256 students belong to low mastery while only 3 students or 1.2% attained mastery. Overall, this showed a significant difference, (p-value 0.001) among the science content knowledge of HEI-supervised and DepEd public and private schools.The analysis also revealed that teacher factors including educational attainment, p-value of 0.005; number of years in teaching, p-value 0.013; number of subjects taught, p-value of 0.010; number of classes handled, p-value 0.015 are significant to the level of literacy on science content knowledge of the students.Student-related activities, which include field work, p-value 0.012, Science Exhibits with a p-value 0.002; and stargazing, p-value 0.033 are also found to be significant to the student’s science content knowledge. While only the textbook with a p-value 0.016 is significant in the teaching resources.

Keywords: Application Domain, Content Domain, Science Content Knowledge, Science Literacy, Junior High School students.