Effects of Guided-Discovery Teaching Strategy on Retention in Cell Biology among Senior Secondary School Students in Adamawa State

Abstract

This study examined the effect of Guided-Discovery Teaching Strategy on students’ retention in Cell Biology among Senior Secondary School students in Adamawa State, Nigeria. The study adopted a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest non-equivalent control group design. The population comprised 23,548 Senior Secondary School II Biology students in public secondary schools across the five education zones of Adamawa State during the 2024/2025 academic session. A sample of 142 students selected through multistage sampling techniques participated in the study. Data were collected using the Biology Retention Test (BRT), which yielded reliability coefficients of 0.87 and 0.92 respectively using Cronbach Alpha. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was employed to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that students taught Cell Biology using Guided-Discovery Teaching Strategy obtained higher retention scores. The study further revealed no significant difference in the retention of male and female students taught using Guided-Discovery Teaching Strategy. Additionally, there was no significant interaction effect of teaching strategy and gender on students’ retention in Cell Biology. The study concluded that Guided-Discovery Teaching Strategy significantly enhances students’ retention in Cell Biology irrespective of gender. It was recommended that Biology teachers should adopt Guided-Discovery Teaching Strategy to improve students’ retention and learning outcomes in Biology.