Effects of Mind Mapping Teaching Strategy on the Academic Retention of Senior Secondary School Students in Biology in Adamawa State, Nigeria

Résumé

The study investigated the effect of mind mapping teaching strategy on the academic retention of senior secondary school students in biology in Adamawa State. The design for the study was pretest, posttest non randomized, control group quasi-experimental design. All 366 senior secondary schools in the education zones of Adamawa state with a total of 10,483 students constituted the population for the study. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 203 subjects from four schools in two education zones in Adamawa State for the study. Simple random technique was used to select and assign two intact classes in each of the schools in the two zones into experimental and control groups respectively. Biology Achievement Test (BAT) was used for data collection. Two research questions were raised and answered while two hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significant. Data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test null hypotheses. The results obtained indicated that students taught biology using mind mapping teaching strategy significantly achieved higher retention than those taught using lecture teaching method, F= 148.669 (df1), P=.000.  There is a significant gender effect on the achievement of students taught with mind mapping and lecture method of teaching and is in favor of the male students F= 4.388 (df1), P=.037  . Based on the findings it was recommended that teachers should be encouraged in the use of mind mapping teaching strategy for teaching biology.