ABSTRACT

This study investigated the effect ofconstructivist teaching method on students’ academic achievement and interest in Economics in secondary schools in Abia State. Five research questions and five hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design precisely the pretest posttest non-equivalent control group design. The sample of the study consisted of 87 Senior Secondary II Students (30 male and 57 female students). The study adopted purposive sampling to ensure that schools with similar characteristics were used in the study. The instruments for data collection were multiple-choice objective questions titled “Economics Achievement Test (EAT) and Economics Interest Questionnaire (EIQ). Both instruments were subjected to face validation. The EAT was further subjected to content validation using table of specialization while the Kuder Richardson (20) formula was used to determine the internal consistency ofthe items that made up the EAT which yielded a correlation coefficient (r) of 0.77 which indicated that the instrument was reliable. Also, the reliability of Economics Interest Questionnaire (EIQ) was established using Cronbach alpha formula and a reliability coefficient of 0.78 was obtained. The research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Results showed that students who were taught Economics using constructivist teaching method performed better than those taught with lecture teaching method. The study further revealed that constructivist teaching method has an increasing effect on female students’ academic achievement than male. The study also found out that constructivist method of teaching increases students’ interest in Economics when compared with lecture method of teaching. It was also observed from the study that gender of the student did not influence their achievement when combined with method therefore, the reasonable increase in the students’ achievement is not attributed to their gender but linked with the method used. Based on the findings, the researcher recommended among others that senior secondary Economics teachers should adopt constructivist teaching method since it has be proven from the findings ofthe study to be more effective in enhancing students’ academic achievement in Economics.