EFFECTS OF MATHEMATICS PRE-TEACHING ON SENIOR SCHOOL STUDENTS' ACHIEVEMENT IN BIOLOGY IN ILORIN, NIGERIA

Abstract
Genetics is a branch of Biology that deals with the study of heredity and variation is considered one of the hard-to-teach and hard-to-learn biological concepts in literature. Conceptual understanding of genetics enhances students' performance in both internal and external examinations. The study, therefore, sought to examine the effects of mathematics pre-teaching on senior school students' achievement in genetics. Specifically, two research questions and corresponding hypotheses were raised and tested in the study. All the hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significant. The study adopted a quasi-experimental research design and the samples for the study were drawn from two intact classes that were purposively selected from Ilorin metropolis. Genetics Achievement Test and Mathematics pre-teaching manual served as the response and stimulus instruments respectively. Findings from the study revealed that students exposed to Mathematics pre-teaching instructional strategy achieved significantly better than their counterpart that were taught using the conventional method. Gender also did not have any significant influence on the achievement of male and female students taught using the mathematics pre-teaching strategy. Based on the findings from the study, it was concluded that exposing students to basic mathematical concepts that are relevant to proper understanding of genetics brings about better understanding of genetics and hence, improves their achievement in genetics. It was therefore recommended that teachers could adopt pre-teaching of the mathematical components of genetics before teaching genetics.
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