EFFECTS OF TWO PRACTICAL STRATEGIES ON ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL BIOLOGY STUDENTS IN GOMBE STATE

The study investigated the effects of laboratory work and field work practical teaching strategies on academic achievement of senior secondary school biology students. It also investigated the effects of attitude and gender on the measure outcome. A quasi-experiment pre-test post-test control group design was adopted in which treatment (at four levels) was crossed with attitude (at two levels) and gender (at two levels). Sample consisted of 146 SS2 biology (86 males and 60 females) drawn from four intact classes randomly selected from four senior secondary schools. Biology Achievement Test (BAT), Practical Skill Test (PST) in practical biology, attitude questionnaires in practical biology were the instruments used for data collection, seven hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Data collected were analyzed using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), Multiple Classification Analysis (MCA) and sheffee test. Only treatment had significant main effects on academic achievement with the combined group exhibiting the test performance, followed by the laboratory work group and then the field work group and lastly the modified lecture group which served as control. There were no main interaction effects of gender and attitude. Recommendations were made based on findings for the need for employment of these tested strategies for regular practical classes in biology at the senior secondary school level