EFFECT OF PRACTICAL BIOLOGY ACTIVITIES ON INTEREST OF SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN KOGI STATE

Abstract

The paper investigated effect of practical biology activities on the interest of senior secondary school students in Kogi State. Three research questions and three hypotheses guided the study. Quasi-experimental research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study consists of 11,391 (6,082 males and 5,309 females) senior secondary school II students offering Biology for 2024/2025 academic session in Kogi State. The sample for the study consisted of ninety five (95) students selected from four schools by simple random sampling technique. The schools were grouped into two, experimental and two control. Only co-educational schools were used for the study. Since it is a non-randomized, non-equivalent control group design as intact classes were used for the study. The instrument for data collection was Biology Interest Scale (BIS). Reliability coefficient obtained on BIS using Cronbach Alpha formular is 0.88. After administration of instrument, data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer research questions while analysis of co-variance was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings showed that practical activities fostered interest of male and female students in Biology. Also, findings revealed that practical biology activities enhanced interest more among the female students than their male counterpart. It is recommended among other things that Biology teachers should engage students more in practical activities to stimulate their interest in Biology.