Effects of Inquiry Strategy on Achievement and Retention of Basic Science and Technology among Students in Karu LGA, Nasarawa State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated through experimentation the effects of Inquiry Learning Strategy on achievement and retention of Basic Science and Technology among students in Karu LGA of Nasarawa State, Nigeria. The study was guided by six research questions with corresponding hypotheses tested at the 0.05 level of significance. The target population comprised 3,050 JS II students in 41 public co-educational junior secondary schools. A quasi-experimental pre-test, posttest, post posttest control group design was adopted. Gender and Ability Levels served as moderator variables. Pretest was used to identify two intact classes with similar abilities randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. A sample of 152 students participated in the study. Data were collected with researcher-developed 40-item multiple-choice questions based on a table of specification for content validity and further appraised by experts for rational validity. The coefficient of internal consistency for the instrument was 0.82 obtained through Split-half method. Data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation for answering research questions and ANCOVA for testing the hypotheses. The study revealed no significant difference in the mean achievement gain scores of the two groups. However, the experimental group returned higher mean gain score than the control group. There was no significant interaction effect of gender and method on the mean achievement scores. Similarly, mean retention scores of students in both groups showed no significant difference. From the findings of the study, it is recommended that teachers of Basic Science and Technology should use inquiry strategy to introduce variation from lecture method, and to eradicate gender-related differences.