Ogunleye, B. O. (2014). Prerequisite knowledge and attitudes to chemistry practical as correlates of students’ performance and practical skills in senior school chemistry. Niger-Delta Journal of Education, 6 (1 & 2), 80-88. Prerequisite Knowledge and Attitudes to Chemistry Practical as Correlates of Students’ Performance and Practical Skills in Senior School Chemistry By Ogunleye, B. O., Ph.D RETRIDAL National Open University of Nigeria banklad2001@yahoo.com Abstract The study investigated the relationship of students’ prerequisite knowledge and attitudes to Chemistry practical with their performance and practical skills in the subject. The correlational type of descriptive design was adopted for the study. Three hundred and twenty-six SS2 Chemistry students from ten senior secondary schools participated in the study. Four instruments: Prerequisite Knowledge Test (r=.85), Attitude to Chemistry Practical Questionnaire (r=.79), Test on Students’ Performance in Volumetric Analysis (r=.86) and Practical Skills Rating Scale (r=.89) were developed and used to collect data for the study. Data collected were analysed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Multiple Regression. Findings showed that prerequisite knowledge had strong positive relationships with students’ performance(r=.53) and with practical skills (r=.44). Also, attitudes to Chemistry practical correlated positively with students’ performance (r=.48) and practical skills (r=.58). Both factors had positive multiple relationships with students’ performance (R=.232) and practical skills (R=.275) and made significant contributions to the two dependent measures (p<.05). It was recommended that Chemistry teachers should identify the rudiments of Chemistry which students need to learn and teach such concepts before their exposure to practical activities and that future curriculum review and revision should attempt a re- organization of the Chemistry curriculum to clearly show the sequence of concepts which should precede specific practical activities. Key Words: Prerequisite Knowledge, Attitudes to Chemistry Practical, Students’ Chemistry Performance, Practical Skills in Chemistry, Senior Secondary School Introduction The effectiveness of some innovative instructional strategies has been postulated as dependent on the learners’ prerequisite knowledge (Artino, 2008). Prerequisite knowledge is the basic knowledge required of learners to be able to learn a particular concept. In order to have effective learning and reduction of extraneous cognitive load, the teacher needs to provide students with pre-training: that is providing instruction on certain tasks prior to asking students to use the new knowledge in the context of a more complex situation. Kalyuga, Ayres, Chandle and Sweller (2003) stated that the effectiveness of an instructional design depends in part on learner’s