ENHANCING SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN BIOLOGY THROUGH CUES AND PROMPTS INSTRUCTIONAL SCAFFOLDING

Abstract

This study examined on enhancing secondary school students’ academic performance in Biology through cues and prompts instructional scaffolding. The study adopted the quasi-experimental pre-test, post-test control group design. Two purpose of study, two research questions and two research hypotheses guided the study. The population for the study were all the senior secondary school class two (SS 2) students in Ogidi education zone in Anambra state. The sample consisted of 120 SS 2 (59 males & 61 females) Biology students drawn from two secondary schools in the study area. Multistage sampling technique involving different technique at each stage was used. First, purposive sampling technique was used to select 26 co-educational schools from the 40 schools from Idemili North, Oyi and Idemili South. Coeducational schools were purposively selected to take care of the gender variable in the study. The schools were stratified into idemili North, Oyi, and Idemili south where they are located. From the local governments, random sampling technique was used to select two local government areas. From the local government areas selected, one school from each was selected at random making a total of two schools which were used in the study. The instrument for data collection was named Biology Achievement Test (BAT) adapted by the researchers from West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) past questions from (June 2018-June 2020). BAT comprised of 25 item questions. The reliability of BAT was tested using Kuder Richerson 20 and the value obtained was .75 indicating that the instrument was reliable. Data obtained were analysed using mean, standard deviation for the research questions and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) for hypotheses. The result showed that cues and prompts instructional scaffolding enhances students’ academic performance in Biology than the conventional method of teaching, male students exposed to cues and prompt instructional scaffolding academically performed better than their female counterpart but there is no significant difference in academic performance on gender. From the findings it was concluded among others that cues and prompts instructional scaffolding is effective for enhancing senior secondary school students’ achievement in Biology. From the conclusion recommendations were made.