EFFECTS OF TEAM-BASED LEARNING ON SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AND RETENTION IN THE TEACHING OF NERVOUS SYSTEM (BIOLOGY) IN NIGER STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This Study investigated the effects of Team-Based Learning on Secondary School Students’ academic performance and retention in teaching of Nervous System (Biology) in Niger state, Nigeria. It adopted a combined Pretest Posttest, Non-equivalent groups’ Quasi-Experimental design. From the population of twenty-two thousand, eight hundred and eleven (22,811) Public Secondary School (SS) II students, one hundred and fifty-five (155) participants were sampled through stratified random sampling techniques. The study had a test and a treatment instrument. Those instruments were validated by experts in science education. During pilot-testing, the validated test instrument was tested and retested using the same population and environmental conditions but outside the targeted samples and 0.77 reliability coefficient was obtained through Crombach alpha and was then administered as pretest, posttest and post posttest to the three groups by the help of Research Assistants. The data collected were analyzed by mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions while t-test was used test the null hypotheses at α = 0.05. The major finding was that, Students taught Nervous System using Team-Based learning performed and retained significantly better than those taught using Lecture Method. Based on the aforementioned, this study concluded that the use of Team-Based learning was more effective in teaching Nervous system in Biology than lectures method among Secondary School Students in Niger State. The study therefore, recommended that Team-Based learning be encouraged among Biology Teachers in teaching Nervous system and other Biology concepts in Niger State and Nigerian Secondary Schools.