Abstract

The main aim of the study was to examine factors that influence science teachers’ use of practical lessons in public secondary schools. The study considered a total of five factors; science laboratory, science teacher attitude, training, workload and laboratory assistant. Primary data was collected from 80 secondary science teachers using self-administered questionnaire with a 5 point Likert scale.  Statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) program 16.0 was used to analyse data. Data analysis involved the use of descriptive statistics, factor analysis and regression. The results showed that out of the five factors examined only science laboratory and laboratory assistant were significantly correlated with practical lessons with P-value < 0.01. The other three factors, science teacher attitude, teacher training and workload were not significant. A regression model was applied to determine the magnitude of influence of each of two significant factors. The results revealed that laboratory assistant has a greater influence on practical lesson than science laboratory with standardized coefficients of 0.368 and 0.209 respectively. The implication of these results is that public secondary schools in conjunction with government will do well to consider giving priority to construction and rehabilitation of science laboratories as well employing more qualified laboratory assistants in order to enhance teaching of science practical lessons