IMPACTS OF COLLATERAL AND ANALOGY TEACHING STRATEGIES ON PRECONCEPTIONS AND PERFORMANCE IN EVOLUTION CONCEPTS ON MALE AND FEMALE NCE III BIOLOGY STUDENTS NORTH CENTRAL, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study investigated the Impact of Collateral and Analogy Teaching Strategies on preconceptions and Performance in Evolution Concepts among male and female Nigeria Certificate in Education Students North Central, Nigeria. A pretest, posttest quasi-experimental control group research design was used. Two groups were involved. The target population for the study was 1211 NCE III Biology students. The study sample of 256 consisting of 151 males and 105 females was drawn from two colleges of education intact classes within North Central, Nigeria. A pretest was administered before treatment to establish the equivalence of the experimental groups. The male and female subjects in the experimental group1 were taught evolution concepts using analogy teaching strategy, while the experimental group2 students were taught the same concepts using collateral teaching strategy for the period of six weeks. The instruments used, Unscientific Preconception Test on Evolution (UPTE) and Evolution Performance Test (EPT) was adopted from Biology textbook questions and past moderated NCE III examination questions. The questions were validated for data collection and reliability index of 0.69 for UPTE and 0.76 for EPT. Two research questions and two null hypotheses were stated and tested. The data collected were subjected to statistical analysis at p≤ 0.05 level of significance. Descriptive statistics was used to answer the research questions, while t-test statistics was used to test the hypotheses stated. The results obtained showed that both male and female students taught using analogy teaching strategy performed significantly better than those taught using collateral teaching strategy. However male and female students did not differ significantly in their unscientific preconceptions in evolution concepts. Based on the findings it was concluded that both male and female NCE III Biology students did not differ significantly in the unscientific preconceptions. It was recommended that teacher-trainers like the Colleges of Education, Polytechnics and Universities should incorporate analogy strategy into their methodology curricular at all levels. This will ensure the development of its knowledge in the teachers on training.