Improving Academic Achievement of Civic Education Students via Using Guided Discovery Instructional Strategy

Abstract

The study investigated the effect of the Guided Discovery instructional strategy on students’ academic achievement in civic education in the Ijebu Ode Local Government Area of Ogun state, Nigeria. Three null hypotheses were tested in the study. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design. The population of the study comprised all civic education students in public senior secondary schools in Ijebu Ode, local government of Ogun state, Nigeria. Two public co-educational schools were randomly selected from the local government with 126 senior secondary two (SS II) from two intact classes. Data was collected using the Academic Achievement in Civic Education Test (AACET) with a 0.84 reliability index. The data collected was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at a 0.05 level of significance. The result shows a significant main effect of instructional strategy (F (1, 121) = 35.508, P < 0.05) on students’ academic achievement in Civic education. It also shows a significant main effect of gender on students’ academic achievement in Civic Education (F (1, 121) = 4.688, P < 0.05). While the result of the 2-way interaction effect shows no significant interaction effect of instructional strategy and gender on students’ academic achievement in Civic education (F (1, 121) =.5665, P > 0.05). It is recommended that more efforts should be geared toward advancing the strategies for use among students of the two gender groups. Further research on these strategies could be carried out in various other classes in other countries of the world.