Abstract:
Traditional teaching methods such as the lecture method have been used in the school
education, up to G.C.E. (A/L) classes in Sri Lanka for a long time. In 2007, the National
Institute of Education in Sri Lanka introduced the competency based approach (CBA) for
the first time for grade 6 and 10 (NIE, 2009). It was extended to other grades
progressively in the later years. The G.C.E. (A/L) curriculum was reformed in 2009 and
CBA was introduced in teaching-learning process. In the CBA, the teacher acts as a
resource person and provides the students the required reading material, equipment, other
inputs and it is carried out according to the 5E model (Ginige, 2008). It involves five
stages of learning phases namely, engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration, and
evaluation (Ginige, 2008).
An evaluation of the process development and implementation of curriculum has been
carried out for grades 6 and 10 in 2008 (Perera, 2008) and for grades 7 and 11 in 2009
(Perera, 2009) and the strengths and weaknesses have been discussed. The present study
evaluates strengths and weaknesses of CBA against the traditional lecture method,
focussing on students’ understanding of selected lessons in physics and to identify the
difficulties in teaching physics in the school-based environment through CBA.
