ABSTRACT
This research work assessed the effects of Inquiry and Lecture methods on Social Studies students' performance in Colleges of Education, North-West Geo-Political zone, Nigeria The objectives of the study were to determine the effects on performance of students taught using inquiry and lecture methods and to ascertain the difference in the attitude of students in the experimental groups with those of the control groups. The research design adopted for the study is a pre-test, post-test quasi-experimental design. The students were assigned to two experimental groups and one control group. The experimental groups were taught some social studies concepts using guided inquiry method and the guided lecture methods respectively. The control groups did not receive any treatment. The population of the study consisted of all the colleges of education in North West Zone of Nigeria offering NCCE accredited social studies programmes. A purposive sampling technique was employed to select six federal and state colleges of education and a sample of 300 social studies students for the study. Two research instruments were used for the study. The first is a forty-multiple choice social studies performance test (SPT) used for pre-test in order to determine the level of academic equivalence of students and as post-test in order to measure the potential effect of the intervention. The second is a social studies attitude scale (SSAS) developed to establish students attitudes towards social studies before and after the commencement of the treatment. The data obtained were analyzed using frequencies, means and standard error. The research hypotheses were tested using inferential statistics. Hypothesis One and Two were tested using Independent t-test statistic. Hypothesis Three was tested using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). Hypothesis Four was tested using Non-parametric test of Man-Whitney while hypothesis Five was tested using the Non-parametric test of Kruskal- Wallis. The results showed that students taught using guided inquiry method performed significantly better than those taught using guided lecture method, gender has a significant effect on the performance with male students performing better than their female counterparts, the guided inquiry method influenced students' attitudes towards social studies better than the guided lecture method. The study recommended among others that heads of social studies departments in colleges of education should further emphasize the use of inquiry related teaching strategies in the implementation of social studies curriculum as it produces a better performance than other teaching methods.