DIVERGING AND CONVERGING LEARNING STRATEGIES ON BIOLOGY STUDENTS’ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN ORUK ANAM LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA

The study was carried out to examine the effect of diverging and converging learning strategies on the academic performance of Biology students in secondary schools in Oruk Anam Local Government Area. In order to achieve this purpose, three objectives, three research questions and three hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The design for the study was quasi-experimental design. The population of this study comprised all 2631 senior secondary school two (SS2) Biology students in the fourtheen (14) public secondary schools in the study area. The sample of the study was 100 SS2 students. Simple random sampling technique was used for the selection of the sample. The instrument used for data collection was entitled “Biology Performance Test (BPT)” designed by the researcher. The instrument was validated by one Biology lecturer and an expert in Measurement and Evaluation in the Department of Science Education, Faculty of Education, Akwa Ibom State University. A reliability coefficient of 0.85 was obtained for the instrument using Kuder-Richardson 20 formula. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while independent t-test was used for testing the hypotheses. The findings of this study showed that there is no significant difference in the mean performance scores of biology students taught using diverging and converging learning strategies. The result also revealed that there is a significant difference in the mean performance scores of male and female biology students taught using diverging learning strategy. The result of the analysis further showed that there is no significant difference in the mean performance scores of male and female biology students taught using converging learning strategy. Based on the findings of the study, it was concluded that both diverging and converging learning strategies of teaching were more effective at improving students’ performance in Oruk Anam Local Government Area. It was recommended among others that, Akwa Ibom State Government should encourage their teachers to adopt the use of diverging and converging learning strategies in teaching Biology by organizing workshops and seminars for them.