EFFECT OF DESIGN-BASED THINKING INSTRUCTIONAL APPROACH ON SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN BIOLOGY IN AWKA EDUCATION ZONE

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of the Design-Based Thinking Instructional Approach (DBTIA) on secondary school students’ academic achievement in Biology in Awka Education Zone of Anambra State, Nigeria. Two research questions guided the study and three null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The quasi-experimental research design, specifically the pretest-posttest non-randomized control group design, was adopted. The population comprised 3,891 Senior Secondary Two (SS2) Biology students in the 62 public secondary schools in the zone. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used to draw a sample of 122 students (60 males and 62 females) from two co-educational schools, one assigned to the experimental group taught with DBTIA and the other to the control group taught with the Conventional Lecture Method (CLM). Data were collected using the Biology Achievement Test (BAT), a 50-item multiple-choice instrument developed by the researchers and validated by experts in Science Education and Measurement and Evaluation. The reliability of the BAT, established using the Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 (KR-20), yielded a coefficient of 0.88. Data were analysed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions, while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses. Findings revealed that students taught Biology using DBTIA had a significantly higher mean gain achievement score (14.33) than those taught using CLM (6.00), F (1, 117) = 75.482, p < 0.05. There was no significant difference between the achievement scores of male and female students taught with DBTIA, F (1, 117) = 0.201, p > 0.05, and no significant interaction effect between instructional strategy and gender on students’ academic achievement, F (1, 117) = 0.272, p > 0.05. The study concluded that DBTIA is a more effective and gender-inclusive instructional approach than the Conventional Lecture Method for improving students’ academic achievement in Biology. It was recommended, among others, that Biology teachers should adopt DBTIA in place of CLM, particularly for topics requiring deep conceptual understanding.