ECIPROCAL TEACHING AND PERSONAL INTERDEPENDENCE TEACHING STRATEGIES ON STUDENTS' ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN BIOLOGY IN EKET LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA.

The study was carried out to examine the effect of reciprocal teaching strategy and personal interdependence teaching strategy on students’ academic performance in Biology in Eket 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 consisted of all 1,450 (SSS2) biology students in the eight public secondary school in Eket Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. A sample size of 100 students was selected for the study using simple random sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was a structured “Biology Performance Test (BPT)”. The instrument was subjected to face and content validation. A reliability coefficient of .82 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 to test the hypotheses. The findings of this study showed that there is no significant difference in the mean performance scores of Biology Students taught the concept of Food Web using reciprocal teaching strategy and those taught using personal interdependence teaching strategy; there is no significant difference between the mean performance scores of male and female students taught the concept of Food Web using reciprocal teaching strategy; and there is no significant difference between the mean performance scores of male and female students taught the concept of Food Web using interdependence teaching strategy. Based on the findings of the study, it was concluded that both reciprocal teaching strategy and personal interdependence teaching strategy enhance students’ academic performance in Biology in Eket Local Government Area. It was recommended among others that, Heads of department should mentor teachers on how to effectively use both reciprocal and personal interdependence teaching strategies to enhance teaching and learning of Biology.