Effects of Instructional Scaffolding Strategy on Senior Secondary Biology Students’ Academic Achievement and Retention in Taraba State, Nigeria

The study determined the effect of instructional scaffolding strategy on senior secondary school Biology Students' academic achievement and retention of concepts. Two research questions and two hypotheses were formulated for the study. Quasi-experimental research design involving pre-test, the post-test control group was employed. The population of the study was all the senior secondary two (SSII) students in Jalingo education zone. Random sampling technique was used to select four intact classes with 240 students as the samples size for the study. A 50 item Biology scaffolding Achievement Test (BSAT) was the instrument used for data collection, and the same instrument tagged Biology scaffolding Retention Test (BSRT) but arranged differently in numbering and response option. Kuder Richardson's formula 20 (KR-20) was used in estimating the reliabilities for the BSAT and BSRT, and the reliability of 0.87 and 0.85 for BSAT and BSRT respectively were obtained. The experimental group was taught Genetics and Evolution through instructional scaffolding strategy while the control group was taught the same topics through lecture method. The treatment lasted for four weeks. The retention test was administered two weeks after the administration of the post-test. The mean and standard deviation was used to answer the research questions, and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the two hypotheses. The findings show that the students taught with instructional scaffolding strategy have a significantly higher academic achievement than those taught with lecture method. Equally, those taught through instructional scaffolding retained Biology concept more than those taught through lecture method. It was recommended that the teaching of Biology should be scaffolded for better understanding. Curriculum planners should adopt instructional scaffolding as an adequate teaching strategy for the teaching Biology.