Article Published In Vol.8 (May-June 2020)

Effects of Multiple Teaching Methods on Academic Achievement and Interest of Primary School Pupils in Agricultural Science in Anambra State

Author : Nwachukwu, C. U., Onah, F.C., Obijiofor, E.O., Nwankwo, C.U. and Nwakile, T.C.

The study investigated the effects of multiple teaching methods on academic achievement and interest of primary school pupils in agricultural science in Anambra State. Two research questions guided the study while two hypotheses were tested. The study adopted quasi experimental design. The population for the study was all public primary school pupils in the twenty-one local government areas in the state. Due to the large size of the population, multi stage sampling technique was used to select the sample for the study. A total number of 181 pupils were involved in the study. The five groups were randomly selected from five schools as follows; Control group (lecture method) – 35 pupils; Experimental group I (discussion method) – 40 pupils; Experimental group II, (demonstration method) – 28 pupils; Experimental group III (inquiry method) – 42 pupils and Experimental group IV (role-play method) – 36 pupils. The instruments for data collection were Agricultural Science Achievement Test (ASAT) and Agricultural Science Interest Scale (ASIS) which were validated by three experts, all from the Department of Agricultural Education, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The reliability of the instruments was established using Cronbach alpha for ASIS and Kudder-Richardson 20 for ASAT. ASIS and ASAT yielded a coefficient of 0.92 and 0.86 respectively. The research questions were answered using mean while the hypotheses were tested using ANOVA. The findings of the study revealed that demonstration method and role-play respectively ranked first for improving the academic achievement and interest of primary school pupils in agricultural science while lecture method ranked last in both regards. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended among others that Anambra state government should organize training/retraining for agricultural science teachers in the state on the use of demonstration method of teaching so as to enhance the academic achievement of pupils in agricultural science and Head Teachers of primary schools should ensure that agricultural teachers must have acquired competency in role playing before promoting them to enable the teachers understand the need of acquiring the competency so as to improve the interest of pupils in agricultural science.

Keywords: Academic achievement, Interest, Agricultural Science, Teaching Methods