Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to experimentally determine the effects of demonstration and greeno problem solving methods of teaching on students’ achievement in agricultural science in secondary school in Kogi East Education Zone of Kogi State, putting into consideration variables such as gender, school type and school location. Four research questions were articulated and four hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The study employed a quasi-experimental research design. Specifically, the non-equivalent control group design was used. The population for the study was 18225 senior secondary two (SSII) students in 195 secondary schools in the three education zone (Ankpa, Anyigba and Idah) that make up Kogi East Senatorial District for the 2009/2010 session. Out of 195 secondary schools, purposive random sampling technique was employed to select three schools each from rural and urban locations and in each education zone, one single sex male, one co-educational and one single sex female schools were selected. In each of the school selected, three intact classes were also considered in senior secondary two (SSII). Seven hundred and twenty (720) students in the eighteen intact classes constitute the sample for the study. The instrument for data collection was a 40-item ‘Agricultural Science Achievement Test’ (ASAT). The instrument was face and content validated. Using Kuder Richardson 20, a reliability index of 0.80 was obtained. Instructional packages and lesson plans for both the experimental and control groups were developed by the researcher, based on the table of specification. Research questions 1,2,3 and 4 were answered using mean and standard deviation. Hypotheses 1,2,3, and 4 were tested using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) at 0.05 level of significance. The statistical package of social sciences (SPSS) was used. The result of the study revealed that students taught with the greeno problem solving method, demonstration method and conventional lecture method (GPSM, DM and CLM) had significant effects on students’ achievement. The GPSM had the most significant effect followed by DM with CLM having little impact. The variables such as gender, school type and school location had significant effect on students’ achievement in agricultural science. The educational implications of those findings were discussed and various recommendations were made such as: efforts should be made by teachers to integrate thoroughly both the demonstration and greeno problem solving approaches in the teaching of agricultural science in secondary schools; review of agricultural science curriculum should be done periodically and efforts should be intensified by teachers to aggressively adopt both the demonstration and greeno problem solving methods in teaching agricultural science in all classes at the secondary school level with the intention of promoting students’ performance.
