Enhancing Kenyan Secondary School Students’ Performance in Chemistry Using Retrieval Based Concept Mapping

IntroductionChemistry educators suggest that for the subject to be well learnt, learners should be able to make conceptual connection between representations and also develop an understanding of underlying concepts (Kilic & Cakmak, 2013).This position is supported by Ajaja (2011), Boujaoude & Attieh (2007) and Barchok (2011) among others who embrace the idea of meaningful learning and active involvement of the learner in the learning process.One way of attaining this is through practical work.Chemistry is inherently a practical subject where scientific concepts are developed through practical investigation by experiments (Njagi & Njagi, 2015).However, effective implementation of chemistry practical work is hampered by lack of sufficient laboratory resources in most Kenyan secondary schools.The other challenge manifested is lack of technical knowhow by teachers on planning, structuring and execution of chemistry practical lessons (Ituma & Twoli, 2015; Mwangi, 2016).These challenges call for the need to have alternative approaches to active involvement of learners for successful implementation of chemistry curriculum.A number of teaching models have been designed in a bid to improve the status of chemistry instruction.Such carefully planned instructional strategies include: 'the Learning Cycle' (Opara & Waswa, 2013); 'Secondary School Chemistry Investigative Practical Work' (Ituma & Twoli, 2015); 'Cooperative Mastery Learning Approach' (Keter, Barchok & Ng'eno, 2014); 'Computer Aided Strategy' (Julius, 2018) and 'Computer Based Simulation' (Mihingo, Wachanga & Anditi, 2017).Concept mapping and Retrieval Practice are active learning strategies that have been found to not only promote meaningful learning but also enhance retention of learnt concepts.In chemistry, concept mapping is meant to address the problem of linking the multidirectional nature of concepts (Jack, 2013).According to Sket and Glazar (2005), this strategy requires the learner to identify key concepts and show how they are interrelated, allowing thinking in multiple directions.Researchers have also established that concept mapping helps learners to retain learnt concepts (Ajaja, 2011; Jack, 2013; Odom & Kelly, 2000; Ikedolapo & Adetunji, 2009; Yekta & Nasrabadi, 2004).Retrieval Practice is another active learning strategy that has been found to promote meaningful learning (Smith, Whiffen & Karpicke, 2016) and enhance retention of learnt concepts (Karpicke & Bauernschmidt, 2011; Smith, Roediger & Karpicke, 2013).A wealth of past research gives consistent findings which support the idea that practicing retrieval promotes long term retention more than does spending equivalent time repeatedly studying.To practice retrieval simply means to purposefully reconstruct knowledge (Karpicke & Blunt, 2011) by repeatedly retrieving information from memory.This act alters memory (Karpicke, 2017) thus improving future retrieval of that knowledge and other related information (Karpicke, 2018).The process of retrieval is not neutral for learning (Smith, Blunt, Weinstein & Karpicke, 2016), instead every time information is retrieved there is some change that occur which improves one's ability to retrieve and reconstruct that knowledge in future.It is important to note that concept mapping and retrieval practice techniques are not mutually exclusive and researchers have investigated the efficacy of combining them.Even though extensive research has been conducted on Retrieval Practice, there is still no commonly agreed upon theoretical explanation of the mechanisms underlying the process.Two commonly fronted theoretical accounts: the episodic context and the elaborative accounts seem to be inconsistent yet they intend to offer an explanation about the same phenomena.Proponents of the elaborative account propose that the process of retrieving information from memory