Effects of Differentiated Instruction on Academic Achievement in Biology among the Public Senior Secondary School Students in Dutsin-Ma, Katsina State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined the effects of differentiated instruction on academic achievement in biology among co-educational public senior secondary schools in Dutsin-ma, Katsina State, Nigeria. A pretest-posttest, quasi-experimental factorial research design was adopted. The population consists of 676 SSII biology students of six public senior secondary schools in Dutsin-Ma metropolis. Simple random sampling technique by balloting was used to select two schools as sample of the study. Sixty (60) senior secondary school two (SSS2) students made up of fifteen (15) males and fifteen (15) females from each school took part in the study. Three null hypotheses were stated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. A 30-item multiple choice Biology Achievement Tests with test retest reliability co-efficient of 0.70. was used for data collection. Data collected were tested using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) and the result of the study revealed that there is significant main effect of treatment on students’ academic achievement in Biology (F_{1, 59} = 20.84; p<0.05). However, there is neither main effect of gender (F_{1, 59} = 0.22; p>0.05) nor interaction effect of gender and treatment (F_{1, 59} = 0.00; p>0.05.) on students’ achievement in Biology. It was therefore concluded that, differentiated instruction has effect on students’ achievement in Biology irrespective of the students’ gender. It was recommended among others that School administrators should encourage science teachers to use differentiated instruction to teach the student science, especially Biology.