ABSTRACT

The study investigated the Effects of Feedback Mechanism on Secondary School Students’ Academic Achievement and Retention in Economics in Imo State. Five research questions and five hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted a quasi-experimental, pretest posttest non-equivalent control group research design. A sample of 207 Senior Secondary School (SS II) students that offer economics was drawn from two co-educational public secondary schools in the state using purposive sampling technique. The schools were used for both experimental and control groups respectively. Data were collected using a 25 multiple choice item Economics Achievement Test (EAT) for pre-test, post-test and retention tests. The instrument was also subjected to content validation with the use of test blue-print. The instrument was trial tested on other students in  different school outside the sampled schools but within the same study area. Scores from the trial test were analysed using Kuder Richardson (K-R20) formula to determine the internal consistency of the items that made up the instrument which yielded a reliability index of 0.83. The data collected from the students were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions, while the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results revealed that feedback mechanism has statistical significant effect on students’ academic achievement and retention in Economics. It also showed that feedback mechanism has no significant effect on male and female students’ academic achievements but has significant effect on male and female students’ retention in Economics. From the findings, the following recommendations were made; that school administrators should encourage the use of Feedback Mechanism among secondary school teachers as it would serve as a source of motivation to the students. Also, seminars and workshops should be organized by government and relevant professional bodies such as International Association for Economics Educators (IAEE) to educate and sensitize the teachers on the use of Feedback Mechanism in teaching and learning of Economics.