EFFECTIVENESS OF GUIDED-INQUIRY AND FLIPPED-LEARNING METHODS ON SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN ECOLOGY IN ONITSHA EDUCATIONAL ZONE
Keywords:
Academic achievement, Ecology, Guided-inquiry, Flipped-learning, GenderAbstract
The study investigated on the effectiveness of Guided-inquiry and Flipped-learning methods on
secondary school students’ academic achievement in Onitsha Education Zone. Three purposes of studies, two research questions and three hypotheses tested at 0.05alpha level guided the study. A quasi-experimental design using was adopted, specifically the pretest-posttest non-randomized sample was used. Population of the study was 3787 SeniorSecondary students (SS1). A sample of 120 SS1 students from two schools was obtained using multi-stage sampling technique. The instrument used for data collection was Ecological Concepts Achievement Test (ECAT), validated by two lecturers from Departments of Science Education and one lecturer from Educational Foundations all from NnamdiAzikiwe University, Awka. Reliability was established using Kuder Richardson 21(KR21) for ECAT which yielded coefficient of 0.81. The experimental group 1 was taught Ecological concepts using guided-inquiry method while the experimental group 2 was taught using Flippedlearning method. This treatment lasted for four weeks. The students were given pretest and post-s test. The data collected were analysed using mean and standard deviation for research questions while analysis of covariance was used to test the null hypotheses. Results indicated that flipped –learning method significantly
improves secondary students' achievement in Ecology compared to Guidedinquirymethod.Also there was a significant gender difference in academic achievement with the females outperforming the males. The findings revealed that there is no significant interaction effect of gender and teaching methods on students’ academic achievement. It was recommended therefore that Flipped-learning method be adopted for teaching ecology since it uses the language of todays’ students who are used to the web and social media for information and interaction.