Influence of Cognitive Styles on Students’ Achievements in Biology in Senior Secondary Schools in Anambra State

Abstract

The study investigated the influence of Cognitive styles on students‘ achievements in biology in senior secondary schools in Anambra State. One research question and one null hypothesis tested at 0.05 level of significance guided the study. A causal comparative design and a population of 10,206 (SSII) biology students in government owned secondary schools were used. Simple random sampling technique was used to obtain a sample of 265 SS11 biology students from six sampled schools. Two instruments were employed for data collection namely: Group Embedded Figure Test (GEFT) and Biology Achievement Test (BAT). GEFT was used to assess the cognitive styles of students as either field – dependent or field independent, GEFT a standardized instrument with a reliability of 0.89 on a test re-test method. BAT was face and content validated by to biology educators and two experts in Measurement and Evaluation from the Science Education Department, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The reliability coefficient of BAT was established using Cronbach Alpha and gave 0.86.Data were analyzed with mean and standard deviation to answer the research question while one –way Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the null hypothesis. Results showed among others that cognitive styles of dependence – independence significantly influenced the achievements of students in biology.