This study investigated effects of instructional scaffolding on achievement of senior secondary students in chemistry in Ebonyi State of Nigeria. It also studied the interactive effects of scaffolding and gender on achievement of senior secondary school students in chemistry. Three research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. The method of data collection was experimental, were simple random sampling technique was applied to select a total sample of ninety (90) students from the ten secondary schools used for the study. The instruments for data collection were chemistry scaffolding Achievement Test (CSAT) for the treatment group and Conventional Instructional Package (CIP) for the control group. Mean and standard deviation were used for the analysis of the data. The hypotheses were tested using ANCOVA at the level of significance of 0.05. The reliability of the instrument was calculated using Kuder-Richardson (K-R20) procedure, from which a reliability coefficient of 0.85 was obtained. Table 1 presented result on the effect of instructional scaffolding on senior secondary school students’ achievement in chemistry. The result obtained from Table 2 on effect of gender on students’ achievement using scaffolding method proved that the male students performed better than the female students. Table 3, which presented result on interactive effects of scaffolding and gender revealed that there is no significant interaction, as both performed well. The researcher made the following recommendations. Teachers should regularly apply instructional scaffolding method to enhance the effectiveness of their instructions; students should abide by scaffolding method of instruction when adopted by the teacher to enhance retention and long term learning; and the school authorities should on regular basis supervise classroom instructions to promote the application of instructional scaffolding by the teachers
Keywords: Apparatus, Chemistry, Instrumental Scaffolding, Nigeria, School, Student
