Article Critique2:

John Rae N. Sadera, Rianna Yvette S. Torres, Danilo V. Rogayan, Jr., "Challenges Encountered by Junior
High School Students in Learning Science: Basis for Action Plan," Universal Journal of Educational
Research, Vol. 8, No. 12A, pp. 7405 - 7414, 2020. DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2020.082524.

Synopsis:
The article, “Challenges Encountered by Junior High School Students in Learning Science: Basis
for Action Plan”, by John Rae N. Sadera, Rianna Yvette S. Torres, Danilo V. Rogayan, Jr. desired to
determine the challenges of junior high school students in learning science. The researcher’s
respondents were 123 Grade 9 junior high school students in terms of sex, there are 61 (49.6%) males
and 62 (50.4%) females from four government-owned high school in Zambales, Philippines. The
Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed in analysing the data and the primary data gathering
tool (α=0.95) used was the developed Challenges in Learning Science Questionnaire (CLSQ). While this
article produced they discover in the results that junior high school students generally encountered not
much challenges across all domains in learning science (M=2.06). It was revealed in the t-test
comparison that male students encountered more challenges in terms of instructional resources and
parental support compared to their female counterparts. The problems met in the researched were the
student motivation, student cognitive ability, teacher characteristics, subject matter content, medium of
instruction, learning environment, instructional resources, curriculum and parental support. The teacher
must enhanced to innovative pedagogical practices to better understand the learner those complicated
topics in Science.

Points of Agreement/Disagreement:
It is very evident from the abstract that the authors trying to determined the challenges that
being faced by the junior high school students in learning Science. Many significant results were noted in
the first part of the discussion. The domains used shows the aspects of science learning are not much of
a challenge among the students. However, in the middle of the discussion selected students that being
interviewed revealed that some of the domains that being used like student motivation and lack of
interest and knowledge about science was one of the challenges in learning science. Towards the end of
the discussion, the authors admitted to the limitation in this research that “the use of varied and
innovative pedagogical practices may also be considered by the teachers to better explain complex and
complicated topics for better Science learning in a VUCAD2 world.” (p.7411). The authors also relate
their research that was compatible to the study of Kaptan and Timurlenk about the challenges
encountered by the students in learning science which adds a great impact and creditable in the piece as
a whole.

Insights:
This article focused in the challenges that being experienced by the Grade 9 Junior High School
Students in Learning Science. In general it is a good, well-written article emphasized the importance of
the role as a teacher to become an innovative in teaching focuses on creating conducive environments
within which good learning can occur. Innovative teaching is where good teachers are inventive and
creative to ensured that students always get the best learning experiences.