Abstract

Assessment is an integral part ofteaching/leaming and isfor several decision making purposes. Time and energy are spent by teachers to grade students’ formative assessment. This study sought to find out the extent peer assessment technique enhances content coverage in Physics. Three research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. The design of the study is quasi experimental. Specifically, the pre — test, post - test non-equivalent control group design was used. The sample consisted of 160 (88 males and 72 females) senior secondary school two (SSS2) students who offer Physics and selectedfrom intact groupsfromfour Model coeducational secondary schools out of 48 coeducational secondary schools in Umuahia Education Zone of Abia State, Nigeria. Two of the four schools were randomly assigned to experimental group and the other two to the control group. The experimental group was taught Physics and was assessed using Peer Assessment Technique while the control group was taught Physics and was assessed using Teacher Assessment Technique. The instrument used for the study is a Physics Achievement Test (PAT) selectedfrom the standardized WAEC multiple choice questions. The same PAT was usedfor both the pretest and post test but was reshuffled during the post test. The instrument was validated and its reliability index obtained as 0.87. Data were analyzed using percentages, mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions while the hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance using ANCOVA. Results show that Peer Assessment Technique increased subject content coverage which in turn resulted to increase in achievement in Physics. It is recommended that teachers should use peersfor assessment to provide them with more time for teaching.