Score Level, Text Structures and Senior Secondary School Students’ Achievement in Genetics in Ilorin, Nigeria

Abstract

Genetics is one of the hard to learn biological concepts owing to its connectedness to Latin / Greek origin. Hence, the need for its proper structuring for easy comprehension by the students. The effectiveness of text structure on students’ proper understanding had been widely reported in literature, hence, this study investigated score levels, text structures and senior secondary school students' achievement in genetics. Specifically, the study assessed the: (i) variation in the achievement of students taught using different text structures (ii) interaction effects of text structures and score levels on senior school students’ achievement in genetics among others. A quasi-experimental design of pretest, posttest, non-equivalent, and non-randomized control group was adopted. A total of 239 students purposively selected took part in the study. ANCOVA was used to analysed the hypotheses at 0.05 alpha level. Findings indicated that there was (i) a statistically significant difference in the achievement of students exposed to different text structure i.e., F (2, 238) = 15.11 at p < 0.05; (ii) no statistically significant difference in the interaction effects of text structure and score level. The implication of the finding is that the two structured texts were useful for improving senior school students’ achievement in genetics. It was therefore, recommended that biology teachers should consider logical prose and concept maps in structuring their instructional materials.