Relative Effectiveness of Constructivism and Meta-Learning Teaching Methods on Male and Female Students’ Academic Achievement and Retention in Basic Electricity in Technical Colleges

Abstract

The study was conducted to determine the relative effectiveness of constructivism and meta-learning teaching methods on male and female students’ academic achievement and retention in basic electricity. Technical Colleges in Anambra state was used for the study. Four research questions guided the study and four null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. A quasi-experimental research design of non-equivalent group was adopted. The population of the study was 560 national technical college (NTC) year II students from 12 technical colleges in the area. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 108 students (79 males and 29 females) from four technical colleges in Anambra State. The instrument for data collection was Basic Electricity Achievement Test (BEAT). BEAT was developed by the researchers and validated by three experts in the Faculty of education, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. Kuder Richardson 20 formula was used to determine the reliability of the instrument which yielded reliability co-efficient of 0.87. Data collected for the study were analysed using mean for research questions and ANCOVA for null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result of the study revealed that constructivism teaching method was better for improving male and female technical college students’ achievement in basic electricity while meta-learning teaching method was better for improving male and female technical college students’ retention ability in basic electricity. And there was no significant difference in the male and female technical college students’ academic achievement and retention when taught basic electricity using constructivism and meta-learning teaching methods. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that basic electricity students should be given equal opportunity, encouragement and motivation during classroom instructions irrespective of gender. Also teachers of basic electricity should adopt the teaching method that incorporates constructivism and meta-learning teaching method in the teaching and learning of basic electricity in order to enhance knowledge mastery and retention among students since both teaching methods were effective in improving academic achievement and retention of male and female students in basic electricity.

Keywords: Gender. Constructivism, Meta-learning, Academic achievement, Retention, Basic Electricity, Technical colleges 

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-33-10

Publication date: November 30^th 2019