ABSTRACT
This study Investigated the Effect of Realia on Academic Performance of Senior Secondary School Students in Geography in Kankia Educational Zone Katsina StateNigeria. The study is prompted by persistent mass failure of geography students in the final year SSCE examination. The study objectives were; to determine the effect of realia on the academic performance of senior secondary school students in Geography; examine the effect of realia on performance of gender as well as rural and urban students in Geography. This is guided by three research questions among which include, what is the effect of realia on academic performance of senior secondary school students in geography? To further achieve this, three null hypotheses were formulated and include, there is no significant difference between the academic performance of senior secondary school students exposed to realia (experimental group) and those who were not exposed to it (control group).The study is delimited to only SS I Geography Students of public Secondary Schools in Kankia Education Zone of Katsina state. The study adapted pre-test post-test quasi-experimental and control group design. A total number of 200 students, from a population of 2089 SS1 Geography students were selected using purposive sampling technique, formed the sample of the study. Geography Achievement Test developed by the researcher and validated by expert guided in data collection. Research questions were answered using Mean and Standard Deviation while t-test statistic at 0.05 confidence level were used test the hypotheses , using SPSS package. From the result of findings, it was confirmed that, there is significant difference in the academic achievement scores of Geography Students exposed to realia and those taught the same concept using lecture method only. Students taught geography using realia performed perform better than their counterpart taught the same concept using lecture method only. The result obtained further revealed that there is no significant difference in the performance of geography students in the rural and urban area taught using realia only. There is also no significant difference between the performance of male and female students taught geography using realia as instructional material, therefore the use of realia is gender friendly. Based on the findings obtained from this study, it was recommended that the use of realia in teaching Geography in schools should be encouraged by Federal Ministry of Education, and State Ministries of Education. It was also recommended that Stake holders in education industries such as Federal and state ministries of education across the nation should train and retrain teachers on utilization of realia in teaching through organizing periodic seminars, conferences and workshops to teachers. It was also recommended that teachers should be sourcing realia from various sources prescribed by National Policy on Education.