AUDIO AND AUDIO-VISUAL TEACHING STRATEGIES AND STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN BIOLOGY

The study aimed at determining the influence of Audio and Audio-Visual Teaching Strategies on Students’ Academic Performance in Biology’. Three research questions and three null hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The study employed a quasi-experimental research design. Simple random sampling technique was used to select schools from the target population and the study made use of a total sampling of one hundred (100) SS2 Biology students from two (2) public secondary schools in Ukanafun Local Government Area. A research instrument titled “Biology Performance Test (BPT)” was constructed for data collection. The reliability coefficient of 0.81 for the BPT was obtained using Kuder Richardson (KR-20) reliability estimate. Research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The results revealed that students taught the concept of freshwater habitat using Audio-Visual Teaching Strategy performed academically better than those taught using Audio Teaching Strategy. Both male and female taught using Audio and Audio-Visual Teaching Strategies performed equally better. The researcher concluded that the utilization of these instructional strategies encourages students participation in instructional practices irrespective of gender and increases the academic performance of students in Biology at secondary school level. Based on the findings and implications, it was recommended that Teachers should strive to use AudioVisual Teaching Strategy in teaching Biology concepts as this would help to enhance and facilitate academic performance of students in Biology.