THE USE OF PROCESS SKILLS IN TEACHING BIOLOGY CONCEPTS ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AMONG SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS STUDENTS WITHIN KANO METROPOLITANT

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study investigated the use of process skill strategy on academic performance of Senior Secondary School II Biology Students in Kano metropolitan. One Research question and one null hypothesis guided the study. A Quasi-Experimental Design with pre and posttests, experimental and control groups were adopted. One Hundred and Sixty (160) students were randomly selected from four secondary schools within the research site. An instrument known as Biology Achievement Test (BAT) with reliability coefficient of 0.87 was used for data collection. The experimental group was exposed to teaching of biology concept using a particular process skill teaching method as Practical-oriented Instructional Strategy (PIS), where every lesson is accompanied with practical activities, while the control group was exposed to traditional method of teaching. The data collected were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and t-test statistics at P ≤ 0.05 levels of significance. The result showed that students exposed to process skill using practical-oriented instructional strategy performed superior than those exposed to traditional lecture method. This finding recommended among other things that teachers should be trained on how to use process skills strategy in teaching biology concepts by engaging them to attained training, seminars, and workshops conferences. There is also need to adopt the method of student centered teaching method as they are exposed to practical activities they equally enquire and find solution to a given problem.

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