Play Way Method and Academic Achievement of Students with Deafness in Social Studies in Special Education Schools in Uyo Nigeria

This work examined the Influence of Play Way Method on the Academic Achievement of Students with Deafness in Social Studies in Special schools in Uyo Nigeria. The objectives of the work were to examine the difference in the achievement of students with deafness taught social studies using play way method and those taught without in Special schools in uyo Nigeria ; determine the difference in achievement of male and female students with deafness taught social studies using play way method in Uyo, Special schools in uyo Nigeria and assess the difference in achievement of students with deafness in rural and urban areas taught social studies using play way method and those taught without in Special schools in uyo Nigeria . The research adopted the quasi experimental research design of the pre test post test control group methodology. Independent t-test was used to test the hypotheses. A researcher-designed questionnaire titled "Playway Method Instrument" and a Social Studies Achievement Test were the instruments used for data collection. Findings of the study indicated that there is a significant influence of play way method on the academic achievement of students with deafness in social studies in Special education schools in Uyo Nigeria. The study recommended that Teacher should create play activities to engage the students during every lesson. This will engage students into more activities which will enable them use their hands, develop their eye-hand coordination as they usually concentrate carefully on what they are doing


Play Way Method and Academic Achievement of Students with Deafness in Social Studies in Special Education Schools in Uyo Nigeria
Dr. Kingsley Ezechinyere Nwachukwu and Dr. Chikodi Joy Anyanwu ISSN 2520-3991 (Online) Vol.7, Issue 5, pp 74 -82, 2023 www.ajpojournals.org

INTRODUCTION
Play has long been regarded as a critical element of early childhood curriculum and pedagogy.In addition to being recognized as a vehicle for learning, play is described as a context in which children can demonstrate their own learning and help scaffold the learning of others (Wood, 2018).Despite this, educators often struggle to explain what it is about play than promotes learning and ways in which they can actively facilitate both play and learning (Hanline. 2019).
While this situation applies generally, Hanline (2019) notes that the potential of play to facilitate children's thinking depends largely on educators' ability to seize on the teaching opportunities in an adequate way.A child is happiest when engrossed in play and play can happen in different forms, imitation of family members, to play with Toys or playing tag, hide seek or simply running about in groups, these create experience as a rules for using words (Wole, 2018).Jean Piaget states that the way children form their own concepts through experience, assimilate existing concepts such as cultural value, norms, and beliefs from adults and further create and develop their own concept as they mature toward adulthood.
Fafumoa, Ezeibe, Hauwa and Saliu (2016) stated that the play way method of teaching makes it possible for students to give free reins to their thoughts and express same in creative language, thus paving the way of meaningful education.They further stated that other advantages of the play way method are that of having free knowledge from the preserves of the elites few, given a greater number of people access to education and personal development.The importance of the concept formation in learning process should not be treated with a wave of hand.It helps the child to be bound psychologically with his family even when outside the home, thereby making the learning environment a familiar place which naturally would have been strange to him.He expresses himself easily in his play way method of learning.It is expected that this familiar environment will facilitate the learning process and hence the acquisition of English Language by primary school children.
As children learn through purposeful quality play experience, they build critical basic skills for cognitive development and academic achievement.These include verbalization, language comprehension, vocabulary, imagination, questionings, problem solving, observation, cooperation skills and the perspectives others.Through play, children learn a set of skills, social skill, creativity, hand-eye coordination, problem-solving and imagination.It is argued that these skills better learned through play than through flash cards or academic drills.Also, the level of children's play rises when adults play with them.The varieties of play children engage in increases when adult join in (Koffs, 2016).Discussions of effective education for students with deafness have turned towards teaching strategies used by teachers towards their students and how this affects the impaired pupils' academic achievement.
Social studies is one of the subjects taught in primary and junior secondary schools in Nigeria.It is a field of discipline designed to assist students in solving problems of relationship and interaction in man's dynamic social environment (Mansary, 2015).Social studies is therefore centered on innovative methods that aim at seeking the truth which include problem detecting, problem solving, and learning by experimenting and discovery.The importance of social studies in the Nigerian educational system cannot be overemphasized.The objectives of social studies education are in line with the philosophy and aims of Nigerian education that are hinged on the development of high competencies required for solving man's diverse environmental problems for better and effective social living.The focus of social studies is to extricate the Nigerian child from the apron strings of colonial education which merely propagated foreign values and therefore acquainted him with his own cultural values and traditions.
Hearing impaired denotes a group of people with various degrees of hearing loss (Kapp, 2012).
Researchers and advocates for people with disabilities feel that the term 'impairment' is negative and reflects on the individual, creating the impression that there is something wrong with the individual.The term impairment is derived from the medical model which defines disabilities in terms of deviance, like an illness which should be fixed and cured.Opponents of the medical model advocate for a social model of understanding and for defining disabilities by rather using the term 'aurally handicapped'.According to this model, a society has to adapt to accommodate the disabled individual and remove these barriers (Ross & Deverell, 2014).
For the purpose of this study, the term hearing impairment/hearing impaired will be used instead of aurally handicapped.This terminology has become synonymous with the Nigerian way of distinguishing between three categories of children depending with their ability to hear.The three categories or classification has a lot to say when it comes to determining the education they receive, which are partially hearing children, hard-of hearing, children who are deaf.He refers to children with a hearing loss of less than 35dB as partially hearing.Hard of hearing pupils/students comprise ones whose hearing loss ranges 35dB and 65dB.For a child to be declared deaf he ought to have a hearing loss of over 65dB.They usually join schools for the deaf and the mode of teaching is by visual teaching method and sign language.
Academic achievement therefore is commonly measured by examinations or continuous assessment test.Academic achievement is the outcome of the extent to which a student, teacher or institution has achieved educational goals.Bossart (2016) defined academic achievement as student's success in meeting short or long term goals in education.Lassiter (2015) argued that students' academic achievement is students' best performance in a given academic area.A student who earns good grades or awards in social studies has achieved success in the academic field of social science; and those who earned poor grades, achieved failure.This could be attributed to a position by Olujuwon (2016) that series of factors such as poor instructional quality, students' negative attitude to school, overcrowded classroom, poor facilities, teachers' motivational skills, lack of instructional materials and parental socio-economic status affect students' academic achievement.

Statement of Problem
In Nigeria, it has emerged through studies from researchers that from time to time children at primary school levels achieved below expectation in social studies and have poor attitude towards subjects involving socialization (Howell and Kemp, 2016).This has spurred the debate on the best time to introduce social studies into the curriculum of students with hearing impairment.For example, in Uyo Local Government Area, the trends of Common Entrance results of students with deafness who passed social studies over a six (6) years period include; 2010 (47%), 2011 (31%), 2012 (58%), 2013 (48%), 2014 (58%), 2015 (44%) (UBE, 2015).
These poor achievement levels have been blamed on various factors including teachers' variables, parental factors, family structure, academic environment, gender, socio-economic status and even teaching strategies.However, the core reason has yet to be discovered.This work therefore, examines the influence of play way method on the academic achievement of students with deafness in social studies.

Purpose of the Study
This work examined the influence of play way method on the academic achievement of students with deafness in social studies.Specifically, the work aims to: i. Examine the difference in the achievement of students with deafness taught social studies using play way method and those taught without in Special schools in Uyo Nigeria ii. Determine the difference in achievement of male and female students with deafness taught social studies using play way method in Special schools in Uyo Nigeria .
iii.Assess the difference in achievement of students with deafness in rural and urban areas taught social studies using play way method and those taught without in Special schools in Uyo Nigeria.

Research Hypotheses
The following hypotheses were tested at .05 level of significance: i.There is no significant difference in the achievement of students with deafness taught social studies using play way method and those taught without in Special schools in Uyo Nigeria ii.There is no significant difference in achievement of male and female students with deafness taught social studies using play way method in Special schools in Uyo Nigeria.
iii.There is no significant difference in achievement of students with deafness in rural and urban areas taught social studies using play way method and those taught without in Special schools in Uyo Nigeria

Scope of the Study
The scope of this work includes content on play way method and academic achievement of students with deafness in social studies.The study is also delimited to the Special education schools in Uyo Nigeria.

Research Design
The research adopted the quasi experimental research design of the Pre Test Post Test control group methodology

Research Area
The research area for this study is Special education schools in Uyo South South Nigeria.

Population of the Study
The population of the study comprised all students with deafness in Government and Private schools for students with deafness in Uyo Nigeria numbering 111.

Sample and Sampling Technique
A sample size of 36 deaf students was used.The study used purposive sampling technique in selecting respondents for the study.

Research Instrument
The research instrument used for the study was a researcher's developed instrument titled play way method and academic achievement of students with deafness (PAALHI) and a social studies achievement test (SSAT) to access pupils' academic achievement.The play way method and academic achievement instrument (PAAI) had 20 items with 4-point rating scale.A weight of 4-1 represented strongly agree (SA) =4, Agree (A) = 3, disagree (D) =2, and strongly disagree (SD) =1.The social studies achievement test instrument (ATI) consisted of a 20 questions.

Reliability of the Instrument
In order to determine the reliability of the instrument, a test retest method was adopted.The researcher administered the questionnaire twice to the same group of respondents at different times.Reliability co-efficient of 0.78 was established for the instrument using the Pearson Product Moment Correlation.This shows a suitability of the instrument for use.

Data Analysis Technique
Independent t-test was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance.

Hypotheses One
There is no significant difference in the achievement of students with deafness taught social studies using play way method and those taught without in Special schools in Uyo Nigeria

*Significant
Data in table 4 above shows that where the result was tested at 35 degrees of freedom (df), the tcal was found to be greater than the t-critical, hence, the null hypothesis which stated that there is no significant difference between the mean achievement score of students with deafness taught social studies using play way method and those taught using other methods was therefore rejected.This implies that, there exists a significant difference in the academic achievement of pupil with deafness taught social studies using play way method and those taught using lecture methods.In other words, students exposed to play way method performed better than those taught using lecture method.

Hypothesis Two
There is no significant difference in achievement of male and female students with deafness taught social studies using play way method in Uyo, Special schools in Uyo Nigeria.  5 shows that, the t-cal was 1.49 and t-critical was 2.04 are not comparably equal.Then, the hypothesis which stated that there is no significant difference between in the mean achievement scores of male and female students taught the social studies using play way method was therefore accepted.This simply means that there exists no significant difference in achievement of male and female students with deafness taught social studies using play way method in Uyo, Special schools in Uyo Nigeria.This simply implies that there is no gender difference between students taught using collaborative teaching method in social studies.

Hypothesis Three
There is no significant difference in achievement of students with deafness in rural and urban areas taught social studies using play way method and those taught without in Special schools in Uyo Nigeria

*Significant
Data in table 6 above shows that the critical value of (t-critical) at 0.05 level of significance and degree of freedom of 35 was 2.04.Since the t-calculated is greater than the t-critical value at 0.05 level of significance, it therefore means that, the null hypothesis was accepted as there exist no significant difference between the mean achievement scores of rural and urban students with deafness taught social studies using the play way method.Inhabitants are mostly civil servants, petty traders and businessmen.

Conclusion
The findings of the study show that students taught social studies using play way method performed significantly better than those taught using other methods.The findings have emphasized the intrinsic worth of play way method in enhancing academic performance of both male and female students with hearing impairment.Therefore, incorporating play way method is proven for improvement of social studies instruction at the primary school level.

Recommendations
Based on the research findings and the conclusion drawn, the following recommendations were made: Based on the findings of the study, it is recommended that: i. Play way method of teaching should be made a priority in teaching students in lower primary school.
ii.The study also recommends that schools and school managers should provide spacious classroom and play ground within the school premises.
iii.Teacher should create play activities to engage the students during every lesson.This will engage students into more activities which will enable them use their hands, develop their eye-hand coordination as they usually concentrate carefully on what they are doing.