EFFECTS OF CONSTRUCTIVIST INSTRUCTIONAL MODEL ON JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT AND INTEREST IN SOCIAL STUDIES
ABSTRACT
This study investigated the effects of constructivist instructional model on junior secondary school students’ achievement and interest in Social Studies. The study adopted the pretest, posttest, non-randomized and non-equivalent control group quasi experimental design. The population of the study comprised the 14,987 JSS II students in Agbani education zone of Enugu state. The sample of the study comprised 290 students drawn from six coeducational secondary schools out of the existing 45 public secondary schools in Agbani education zone through stratified random sampling technique. The instruments for data collection were Social Studies Achievement Test (SSAT) and Social Studies Interest Inventory (SSII) developed by the researcher and subjected to content and construct validation respectively. The reliability of SSAT and SSII were established using test-retest method and the measures obtained were 0.67 and 0.93 respectively. The researcher developed two instructional packages for the study. The first package was based on the constructivist instructional model. The second package was based on the conventional instructional method. Measures were taken to control extraneous variables. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the four research questions while analysis of co-variance (ANCOVA) was used to test the six hypotheses. The results of the study revealed that: the JSS students taught Social Studies using constructivist instructional model performed significantly better than their counterparts who were taught using the conventional teaching method; the female students taught JSS Social Studies using constructivist instructional model performed slightly better than the male students; the constructivist instructional model enhanced JSS students’ interest in Social Studies more than conventional teaching method; and the female students after being taught JSS Social Studies using constructivist instructional model had a significantly higher mean interest score than their male counterparts. There was no significant interaction effect of teaching methods and gender on students mean achievement and interest scores in Social Studies. Based on these findings it was recommended that Social Studies teachers should be encouraged to use constructivist instructional model during classroom instruction in order to enhance students’ achievement and interest in Social Studies.