ABSTRACT
The study investigated the ?Impact of 5E Teaching Cycle on Attitude, Retention and Performance in Genetics among Pre-NCE Biology Students with Varied Abilities, North-West Zone, Nigeria?. The population was 2,231 pre-NCE Biology students made up of 1,168 males and 1,063 females. Simple random sampling technique by balloting method was used to select two schools out of the eleven coeducational colleges of education that served as population of the study. Federal College of Education Zaria served as experimental group while Federal College of Education Katsina served as the control group. Fifty five (55) Pre-NCE Biology students (38 males and 17 females) were selected from each college for the study as guided by Central Limit Theory which proposed that thirty or more subjects are considered as large sample for experimental research of this nature. Quasi-experimental and Control group Design involving pretest, posttest and post-posttest was used for the study. A total of one hundred and ten (110) students were used for the study. Equal numbers of subjects were selected for each group in order to have a fair representation of the subjects in the study. Pretest was administered on the subjects, before they were exposed to the treatment, 5E learning cycle to determine that they are not different significantly in their ability level. The experimental and control group subjects were assigned to sub-groups according to their ability levels by stratifying sampling technique after the pretest. The ability grouping was carried out by categorizing the subjects into high average and low ability group where students who scored 60-100 range of scores comprised high ability, those that scored 40-59 were categorized as average ability and those with 0-39 comprised low ability subjects. The experimental groups were exposed to 5E teaching cycle while the control group was exposed to lecture method. The posttest was given to determine the effects of exposure to 5E learning cycle which was for experimental and control groups. The Post-posttest was administered after two weeks from the administration of the Post-test in order to determine the retention ability of the subjects in the study. Two instruments, namely Genetics Academic Performance Test (GAPT) with reliability coefficient of 0.79 and Students Attitude Genetics Questionnaire (SAGQ) with reliability of 0.82 were used for data collection. Five research questions and five hypotheses guided the study. One of the research questions was: What is the difference in the mean achievement scores of pre-NCE students of varied abilities taught with 5E teaching cycle and those taught with lecture method?. One of the hypotheses include: There is no significant difference in the mean achievement scores of pre-NCE students of varied abilities taught with 5E teaching cycle and those taught with lecture method. These were tested using Mean scores, Two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Kruscal Wallis test statistics at P≤ 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study showed that pre-NCE Biology students exposed to 5E teaching cycle in the teaching and learning of genetics concepts in all the ability levels had higher mean performance scores and also retain more than those in the control group exposed to lecture method of instruction. On the issue of gender differences, the study revealed that male and female in all ability groups exposed to 5E teaching cycle performed equally well and had also no difference in their retention abilities. The attitude of the experimental groups improved significantly in all the three ability levels. Recommendations were made based on the findings source of which is: The teaching of Biology especially genetics should be conducted using 5E teaching cycle as it make xviii students learn meaningfully, enhances better retention of knowledge and develop positive attitude towards the subject. It should therefore be incorporated into the main stream of pedagogy in the teaching of Biology at pre-NCE level of colleges of education