IMPROVING ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL BIOLOGY THROUGH ANALOGY INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGY IN ADAMAWA STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of analogy instructional strategy on students’ academic performance in senior secondary school in biology in Adamawa State, Nigeria.  Two research questions were raised and two null hypotheses were formulated and tested at a 0.05 level of significance the study. Quasi-experimental design of pre-test, post-test, non-equivalent, control group design was adopted. The population of the study was 25,375 SSII biology students across five education zone of Adamawa State. A sample of 172 SSII biology students from two intact classes were purposively selected for the study. A biology Performance Test (BPT) adapted from WAEC past questions from 2020-2024 and subjected to face and content validation was used to collect data for the study. The BPT scores were subjected to K-R 21 to determine the reliability of the instrument. The reliability index of 0.83 was obtained for BPT. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation and ANCOVA was used to test the hypotheses. The findings of the study revealed that: there was a significant effect of analogy strategy and traditional method on the mean performance score of students in biology (F_{(1, 170)} =147.350,  P<0.05). There was a significant interaction effect of treatment and gender on students’ performance in biology ( F(1, 170)= 6.301,  P<0.002). Based on the findings it was recommended that, Biology teachers should be encouraged to teach biology content using analogy instructional strategy putting gender into consideration. Government should organized workshops for biology teachers to improve their teaching effectiveness.