ABSTRACT

The study investigated the effects of concept mapping approach on students’ achievement and retention in Biology. The study was guided by six research questions and six hypotheses using pretest and posttest quasi experimental design. The population of the study was made up of ten thousand and forty five (10,045) Senior Secondary School two (SS11) in Aba Education zone of Abia state. The sample consisted of 400 Biology students, comprising of 210 students in the experimental group which comprised 114 female students and 96 male while 190 students in the control group which comprised 86 male and 104 female. Simple random sampling technique was used to select two local governments out of the Nine local governments, and purposive sampling was used in selecting two school each from the two selected local government Area. The instrument used for data collection was Biology Achievement Test (BAT), made up of 50 multiple choice items. The reliability of the instrument was computed using Kuder Richardson Formular 20 (KR-20) and the reliability coefficient was 0.79. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while analysis of covariance was used to answer the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. From the result of the analysis, it was found out that the mean achievement score of the students in Biology achievement test was higher when taught using concept mapping than using lecture method, the female students’ mean achievement scores was higher than the male students in Biology achievement test scores when taught using concept mapping and lecture method, the students in coeducational school had higher mean achievement scores in Biology when taught using concept mapping than those taught using the lecture method. The result of the hypotheses revealed that there was no significant difference in the mean achievement scores of students in Biology when taught using concept mapping and lecture method, there was no significant difference in the mean retention scores of male and female students in Biology when taught using the concept mapping and lecture method. There is no significant difference in the mean achievement scores of students in coeducation and single sex school in Biology when taught using concept mapping and lecture method. Based on the findings, it was recommended that students should be taught how to construct maps of their own in various topics in Biology, concept map teaching model should be incorporated in the new seniors secondary Biology curriculum to supplement existing teaching methods; lecture method and the concept mapping strategy should be used in teaching Biology at the Senior Secondary School level.