Gender, text structure and senior school students achievement in genetics

Abstract

The poor achievement of students in genetics knowledge could be ascribed to inappropriate manner of structuring genetics instruction given to students. This study investigated gender, text structure and senior school students’ achievement in genetics. A quasi- experimental design involving pretest, posttest, non-randomized control and non-equivalent group design was adopted. A purposive sampling technique was used to select 239 students that participated in the study. The t-test and Analysis of ANCOVA statistics were used for the analysis. Findings indicated that there was: (i) a significant difference in the achievement of students taught genetics using different text structures at p < 0.05, F(2, 238) = 15.11, (ii) no significant difference in the achievement of male and female students taught genetics using concept map at p > 0.05; t = 0.62 among others. The study recommends that biology teachers should consider logical prose and concept map in structuring secondary senior school biology contents.