ABSTRACT

This study investigated the effects of inquiry-based learning and cooperative learning instructional strategies on secondary school Biology students’ academic achievement and retention in Abia state. The need for the study arose from concerns expressed by stakeholder’s, committed scholars and researchers on the poor academic achievement and student’s retention in Biology, and the need to employ innovative interactive learning strategies to improve teaching and learning. Six specific objectives which gave rise to six research questions and six null hypotheses were formulated and pursued. The design of the study was a pre-test -post-test Quasi-experimental research design that involved two experimental and one control groups. The study was carried out in Abia state. The population of the study was 6,781 senior secondary school one (SS 1) Biology students in all the 160 co-educational public secondary schools in Abia State, consisting of 3279 males and 3502 females.  A sample size of 108 SS1 Biology students from three (3) intact classes in three (3) public co-educational schools served as sample of this study. The instrument used for this study is Biology Achievement Test (BAT) which was adopted from WAEC past questions, duly validated by three experts. The reliability of the instrument was got using Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient Statistics. This gave a reliability coefficient of 0.75. The research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses at .05 level of significance.  It was found: that students taught with inquiry-based learning achieved more than students taught with cooperative learning instructional strategy and lecture method and it was significant. Students taught Biology with cooperative learning instructional strategy retained more than students taught Biology with Lecture method and inquiry-based learning and is significant.  Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that combined use of inquiry-based learning and cooperative learning instructional strategies should be used in teaching Biology lessons in the classroom to improve student’s academic achievement and retention in Biology.