ABSTRACT

The study investigated influence of cognitive styles and attitudes on students academic achievement in biology in Thitte and Uboma local government area in Imo State. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of cognitive styles and attitudes of students academic achievement in biology. Three research questions guided the study while two null hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance guided the study. The population of the study include all the 300 senior secondary two (SS2) biology students in all the public schools in Ihitte and Uboma local government area of Imo State. A sample of 169, the researcher selected six (6) schools out of eleven (11) schools in Ihitte and Uboma local government area, using balloting method of simple random sampling techniques. Three instruments were used for data collection for the research. Group Embedded Figure Test (GEFT), Biology Achievement Test (BAT) and Biology Achievement Inventory (BAT). GEFT was used to assess the cognitive styles of students as either field-dependent or field independent. The reliability of BAT was determined using Kuder Richardson 2lwhich yielded a coefficient of 0.72, while GEFT and BAT was determined using Pearson product Moment correlations coefficient which yielded a correlation coefficient of 0.82 and 0.85 respectively. Mean and standard deviation was used to analysed the data, while ANOVA was used to test hypotheses one and T-test was used to test hypotheses two at 0.05 level of significance. Results showed that cognitive styles of field independence significantly influenced the academic achievement of students in biology. Tt was found that field -independent students have a working memory capacity than those of field-dependent students. The curriculum of teachers education in the country should include the use of cognitive styles in teaching in secondary schools to facilitate their biology teaching, identifying learners learning problems in order to popularize their effectiveness in teaching biology.