EFFECT OF INDIVIDUALISED INSTRUCTION ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF PUPILS’ IN BASIC SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

 

Poor Performance in basic science and technology at the primary school level of education might be as a result of inappropriate use of teaching strategy by the teachers. Based on this reason, the researcher examined the effect of individualized instruction on academic performance of pupils in Basic science and technology in Ilorin East LGA Kwara state. Pre-test post-test quasi-experimental control group research design was adopted. Purposive sampling technique was used to select primary 5pupilsschools because of their ability to answer questions on performance test. Random sampling technique was used to select 4 schools, two public and two private. Pupils Basic science and Technology Performance Test (PBTPT) was used as pre-test and post-test respectively. The instrument was validated by the science teachers. Thus, Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) was used to determine the reliability coefficient of the instruments and the reliability coefficient of 0.83 was obtained. The treatment lasted for 6 weeks and it was carried out by the researcher and the research assistants who are class teachers of the schools selected. The procedure adopted was to give pre-test developed based on the topics chosen to the pupils before the treatment. After this, those in the experimental group were taught the selected topics using individualized instruction and control group were taught using conventional method. Data collected were analyzed using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). All the hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The results showed that, there was a significant effect of treatment on the academic performance of pupils in Basic science and Technology (F _{(1; 86)} =12.498; P<0.05), there was no significant effect of gender on the academic performance of pupils in Basic science and Technology (F _{(1; 86)} =.711; P>0.05), there was no significant effect of school-type on the academic performance of pupils in Basic science and Technology (F _{(1; 86)} =.4.082; P>0.05),It was concluded that individualized instructional method is effective in teaching basic science. Based on the findings, the following recommendations were made that individualized instructional method should be adopted by science teachers as the strategy to be used for the content delivery and that gender and school types should be considered while using individualized instructional strategy.

KEY WORDS: Individualized instruction, Basic science, Technology, Gender, School-type