Effect of Group Instruction Technique on Secondary School Students’ Interest in Civic Education in Anambra State, Nigeria

Abstract

The persistent poor students’ interest in Civic education is a major concern and there is need to ameliorate it. This study examined the effect of group instruction technique (GIT) on secondary school students’ interest in civic education in Anambra State. Two research questions guided the study and three null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study employed quasi-experimental design. Multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select 193 Senior Secondary two (SS2) students from six intact classes. The experimental group was 92 (48 males and 44 females) while the control group was 101 (54 males and 47 females). Civic Interest Scale (CIS) was used as instrument for data collection. Validation of the instrument was established by experts in the field of civic education and measurement and evaluation, while Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient was used to establish the reliability of CIS at r = .82. Experimental and control groups were taught Civic education for six weeks using GIT and Lecture method respectively. Mean and Standard deviation were used to analyse data to answer the research questions, while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses using SPSS version 23.0.Findings revealed that the use of GIT significantly enhanced SS 2 students’ interest in Civic education more than the Lecture method. Gender was a significant factor on the effect of GIT on students’ interest in civic education among other findings. Based on the findings, it was concluded that GIT is a good alternative teaching technique to improve students’ interest in civic education. It is therefore recommended among others that, GIT should be formally adopted by secondary school teachers for effective teaching of Civic education to improve students’ interest in the subject.