EFFECT OF EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING STRATEGY ON BIOLOGY SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLSTUDENTS' ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN OGUN STATE,

Abstract

The research considered the effects of experiential learning strategy on students’ academic performance in biology in Ogun state. The investigation was carried out by pretest and posttest quasi-experimental research design. The population involved were all students in Ogun State senior secondary school and 89 students from two intact classes of senior secondary school I which were purposively selected in Odeda local government participated in the study. Data was collected by using a performance test in Biology as an instrument and its Reliability was done using KR-20 and the coefficient value of 0.8 was established. The hypotheses were tested 
using ANOVA at a 0.05 level of significance. The results reveal that there was no significant variation in the academic performance of students’ pretest mean scores taught with experiential learning and conventional methods. There was a significant difference between students taught by experiential learning and conventional methods in their post-test mean score of academic 
performance. Gender influences the academic performance of biology students. The study indicated that experiential learning is more effective in improving students’ academic performance than conventional teaching methods in teaching biology. Based on the findings of the study it was recommended that Biology teachers should adopt experiential learning for 
teaching biology to secondary school students.