EFFECTIVENESS OF GUIDED DISCOVERY STRATEGY ON SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING IN OGUN STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study examined the effectiveness of guided discovery strategy on Secondary School Students’ Academic Achievement in Financial Accounting in Ogun State, Nigeria and also studied the moderating effect of gender on Students’ academic achievement in the subject. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design, involving a pretest, posttest and control group with a 3 x 2 x 2 factorial matrix which comprised three treatment groups and two moderating variables of location and gender. The population of the study was 5,257 SSS II Commercial students in all public secondary schools in Ogun state. A total number of 405 of them were selected in their intact classes as samples for the study using a simple random technique in a multi-stage procedure. The Financial Accounting Achievement Test (FAAT) was the instrument validated and used for data collection and its reliability was determined using K-R 20 reliability method and a coefficient of 0.78 was obtained. Data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer all the research questions and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) to test all the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results showed that there is a significant main effect of treatments on students’ academic achievement in Financial Accounting (F = 3537.52 P < 0.05) because students taught Financial Accounting with guided discovery strategy had higher academic achievement than those taught with conventional method. Results also showed that there is no significant effect of gender on students’ academic achievement in Financial Accounting (F = 0.129 P > 0.05). The study concluded that the guided discovery Strategy was more effective than the conventional method because it helped to improve students’ achievement in Financial Accounting. Based on the conclusion, it was recommended among others that secondary school Financial Accounting teachers should adopt a guided discovery strategy for instructional delivery to enhance students’ academic achievement and Ogun State Ministry of Education through Educational secretaries and officials assigned to curriculum review should include the use of Guided Discovery Strategy to the instructional methods used in teaching Financial Accounting.