THE IMPACT OF STUDENT-GENERATED ANALOGIES ON STUDENTS ACHIEVEMENT IN BIOLOGY
ABSTRACT
The goal of this study was to look into the impact of student-generated analogies on student achievement in biology. To accomplish this, two research questions were posed. The first was, “What is the impact of student-generated analogy on student achievement in Biology?”
The second question was about the performance differences between male and female students who were taught using a student-generated analogy. In addition, two hypotheses were developed. According to Hypothesis
(1), there will be no significant difference in performance between students taught using student-generated analogy and those taught without using student-generated analogy. According to Hypothesis 2, there will be no significant difference in performance between male and female students who are taught using a student-generated analogy.
The sample size for this study was 76 (seventy-six) people. Ipori Estate Senior High School had 37 (thirty-seven) respondents, and Itolo Girls Senior High School Surulere had 39 (thirty-nine) respondents. The research instruments used were a quasi experimental design and a Biology achievement test with a pretest and a posttest.
The pre-test consisted of forty structured objective questions in biology that were administered prior to the treatment period, while the post-test consisted of forty structured questions that were administered following the treatment period.
ANOVA was used to analyze the achievement test response. The findings revealed a significant difference in performance between students taught with and without student generated analogy. Thus, students who were taught using student-generated analogy outperformed those who were not taught using student-generated analogy. Males who were taught using student-generated analogy outperformed females who were taught using student-generated analogy.
The findings of this study demonstrate unequivocally the importance of using analogy in classroom instruction. When both the teacher and the student understand how to use analogy during the explanation of biological concepts, teaching and learning will be more effective.
This will assist the audience in better understanding the topic. Educational The findings imply that analogy is a powerful cognitive mechanism used by people to make inferences and learn new abstractions. It improves human cognition and is used to solve real-world problems. It assists and advises on educational philosophy, educational practice, and educational software design.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 THE STUDY’S BACKGROUND
Scientific research, particularly in the twenty-first century, has greatly improved our understanding of the world around us. This has resulted in numerous changes in various areas of human endeavor, such as education, health, power, industry, and the environment.
It has encouraged healthier living and good practices. There has been a tremendous increase in research, which has resulted in numerous scientific and technological discoveries. All of these innovations and developments are interconnected and reliant on one another.
Natural science has recently seen significant advancements, and science in this century has demonstrated in the areas of innovation and technology, as well as a great potential for transforming human life and the world around him. The advancement of science and technology is critical to society and the nation as a whole, which is why it has recently received a lot of attention in our schools.
Students’ perceptions of science and their state of mind in class, as evidenced by the types of questions they ask, indicate that there are many biases and misconceptions about science. This could be a serious impediment to science teaching and learning, and it has hampered students’ understanding of science.
These misconceptions have had a significant impact on biology in particular, resulting in consistently poor performance in the subject. It is an indication that biology is not being taught properly in our schools. External examination results such as WAEC, SSCE, NECO JAMB, and internal examination results are good examples of this. According to the 2011 WEAC results, there was a 58.8 percent failure rate in biology (source WAEC Yaba)
There is a need to investigate some of the strategies and methods used by teachers in schools, because the teaching method and strategies used by the teacher have a significant impact on the student’s performance in their examinations. An effective teacher employs a variety of strategies and teaching methods to buttress, emphasize, and clarify his or her concept.
Meta-cognitive strategies include knowledge about when and how to use a specific strategy for learning or problem solving. The strategy can be the students’ thoughts as well as their physical actions. Student-generated concept mapping is one example of a meta-cognitive strategy.
This was evident in reading comprehension. According to (Kang 2004), research has shown that visual displays have the potential to help readers understand content information and make connections between concepts. Diagrams, maps, graphics, organizers, and pictures, for example, can be used as a type of reading strategy by possibly converting difficult information into a simplified layout.
By making prior knowledge explicit and requiring the learner to pay attention to the relationship between concepts, concept mapping aids in the visualization of such conceptual frameworks and stimulates prior knowledge (Sohannsen 1996).
According to, students acquire new concepts through both discovery and knowledge or through reception learning (Novak 1983). Reception learning has the disadvantage of teaching students to memorize definitions rather than learning the meaning of the concept in the definition.
Another meta-cognitive strategy is constructivism. It is a knowledge and learning theory. It emphasizes the significance of knowledge, belief, and skills that an individual brings to the learning experience. It sees and accepts new understanding construction as a combination of readiness to learn and application. Individuals make decisions about which new ideas to accept and how to incorporate them into their pre-existing worldviews (Brook and Brooks 1995).
Students are expected to learn certain skills in school that will help them perform well in the laboratory and on the field. They are to learn skills and abilities that will allow them to apply scientific knowledge in personal matters, society, and the environment in general. Students, particularly in biology, should be able to demonstrate relevant and functional scientific attitudes.
Some strategies have been validated by researchers and found to be effective for effective teaching and learning in biology; however, they need to be improved. The use of analogy in teaching is a viable teaching technique that has been reported to have a high level of success.
Analogy is an agreement or similarity in some specifics between things that are otherwise different, such as photosynthesis and respiration, osmosis and diffusion, and so on. Thinking in terms of analogy entails transferring prior knowledge from a familiar situation to a situation that needs to be clarified (Gentner, 1983).
The identification and retrieval of a similarity between potential relations in a target and known relations in the source allows one to understand the new situation using a familiar situation as a foundation. Analogy can inspire students by pointing out an anomaly or surprising them. It is typically used to aid learning in specific areas of target domains.
The Biology Education Research Community has been interested in the use of analogy as an effective pedagogical tool. Students can benefit from a strategy that requires them to generate analogies. The learning process becomes active when students generate analogies. They must think about the subject long enough to come up with a logical analogy. They will not only learn more about the biological concept, but they will also use a creative type of thinking known as Lateral Thinking.
“Lateral Thinking” (De Bono 1970) asks the mind to abandon normal sequential thinking patterns and form a lateral leaf in order to devise new thought patterns. Making analogies lays the groundwork for developing new thought patterns. Students begin with analogies that make sense and progress to analogies that appear to make no sense until creativity and new thought patterns are developed.
These new analogies help students see the concept in a different light, which gets them thinking and helps them with critical thinking and problem solving. Analogy is a comparison of one thing to another that has similar characteristics. Teachers, for example, draw analogies between the human heart and the pump, photosynthesis and respiration, Osmosis and diffusion.
Analogy is the transfer of prior knowledge from a familiar situation to a new situation that needs to be clarified. It is the ability to identify and retrieve a similarity between potential relations in a target and known relations in the source that allows one to understand a new situation based on a familiar situation.
Analogy can help students in a variety of ways. It makes the learning process more active. Before they can create an analogy, students must first understand the topic thoroughly. This will allow them to learn more concepts and think more creatively. Making analogies lays the groundwork for developing new thought patterns.
Analogy allows students to see concepts in new ways, which stimulates their thinking and aids in critical thinking and problem solving. An example of an analogy is the concept of translation in protein synthesis. It is made up of four parts: “target,” “source,” “match,” and “mismatch.”
The goal is to learn the unfamiliar, abstract material. It could be a theory, a principle, a procedure, or a problem. The source concept is a familiar visualizable material derived from the environment or from a situation in the environment. “
The similarities shared by the corresponding features of the source concept and the sub concepts of the target concept are referred to as matches. Analogy is defined as a concrete and visual representation of the matches and mismatches between the “source” and “target” concepts. The teaching method has a significant impact on the students’ performance.
1.2 THE PROBLEM’S STATEMENT
Students are prepared to acquire skills, knowledge, and functional abilities in biology that will help them manage their academic and everyday life affairs, but past school results show that students’ performance in biology deteriorates more than any other basic science subject.
According to WASSCE results for Biology in the May/June examination 2011, there was a 58.8 percent failure rate ( Source: WASSEC Yaba). This sparked the search for a better way to teach students so that they can become deeply involved in the topic at hand, resulting in better understanding and performance. As a result, there is a need for research into alternative modes of instruction, such as student-generated analogy.
1.3 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The goal of this study was to look into the impact of student-generated analogies on students’ biology achievement.
To see if there are any differences in performance between male and female students who were taught using a student-generated analogy.
1.4 THE STUDY’S IMPORTANCE
The research would improve the quality of teaching and learning. It would encourage students’ creative thinking and active participation. It would help to pique students’ interest in creating analogies. It would also encourage teachers to use the student-generated analogy method in order to plan ahead of time and know the best analogy to drive home the points intended in the lesson.
The study would be extremely beneficial to authors and other researchers in encouraging them to write more books about student-generated analogy.
Curriculum planners are given the opportunity to see the need to plan the curriculum in a way that encourages the use of student generated analogy in the teaching and learning of Biology in order to appeal to the learner’s senses while also ensuring that it meets the needs of society.
1.5 QUESTIONS FOR RESEARCH
1. What effect does student-generated analogy have on student achievement in biology?
2. There will be no statistically significant difference in performance between male and female students who are taught using a student-generated analogy.
1.6 HYPOTHESES FOR RESEARCH
1. There will be no significant differences in achievement between students taught with and without student-generated analogy (experimental group) (control group).
2. What is the difference in performance between male and female students when taught with a student-generated analogy?
1.7 THE STUDY’S OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of student-generated analogy on student achievement in biology in two selected secondary schools in Lagos state’s Surulere local government area. The two schools chosen are Iporin Estate Senior High School and Itolo Girls Senior Secondary School Surulere, with the reason being that maximum cooperation was received from the teachers and students within the schools.
1.8 TERM DEFINITION
ANALOGY
Analogy can be defined as a type of reasoning in which knowledge is transferred from one situation (referred to as the source or base) to another (referred to as the target) on the basis of some kind of similarity between the two situations, i.e. on the basis of the judgment that the two situations are essentially identical in terms of the task at hand.
BIOLOGY
The study of plants and animals in their natural environment is known as biology.
STUDENTS
A person who is studying at a college, polytechnic, or university; a boy or girl who attends school; or anyone who studies or is devoted to the acquisition of knowledge.
GENERATED BY STUDENT
It refers to what students are able to create or produce. They can bring in new ideas that are relevant to the topic at hand.
PERFORMANCE IN THE CLASSROOM:
This refers to the level or rate at which students perform academically in school. It also shows the level at which students complete their schoolwork in a given period of time, as well as the outcome.
MATERIALS FOR INSTRUCTIONS
It refers to anything that helps teachers teach well in the classroom as well as anything that helps students learn well in the classroom.
TEACHING
It refers to the art and practice of imparting to a learner knowledge, skills, values, and norms that will be beneficial to the individual’s overall development.
ELUCIDATE
To clarify, explain, or shed light on (a problem or difficulty)
CONCEPT
A general concept that underpins a class of things.
CREATIVE
Having the ability to create necessitates intelligence and imagination, not just mechanical skill.
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