Achievement Variations of Basic Science Students Taught with Teacher-Centred, Teacher/Student-Centered and Student-Centered Instructions in Kaduna State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of teacher-centered, teacher/student-centered and student-centered
instruction on the academic achievement of basic science students at the Junior secondary school level, in
relation to class-size and gender. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest research design was used for the
study which featured nine comparable groups of basic science students. Four hundred and eighty JSS II
students randomly selected from nine schools in Giwa Zone, of Kaduna state formed the study sample.
They were taught basic science concepts using the tree types of instruction. Performances of the nine
groups were compared using their posttest mean scores. Four null hypotheses were tested using one way
Analysis of Variance and t-test at a significance level of P<0.05. Integrated Science Achievement Test (ISAT)
with reliability coefficients of and 0.85 was used to collect data for the study. The following findings were
established from the study: (i) Students in three different class-sizes taught with student-centered
instruction achieved significantly higher than those taught with teacher/student-centered and teachercentered.
(ii) There was no significant difference in performance of male and female students when taught
with teacher-centered and teacher/student-centered instruction. (iii) A significant difference was found in
the performance of male and female students taught with student-centered instruction with the males
performing better than the females. Based on the above findings, recommendations were made among
which are the need to train teachers on the use of student- centered instruction in science classrooms.