ABSTRACT
The study investigated "Effects of Information and Communication Technology on Secondary Schools Students? Economics Performance in Kaduna State, Nigeria". The objectives of this study amongst others sought to investigate the performance of SS2 Economics students taught with the use of CAI and those taught with the conventional method of teaching. Six research questions and hypotheses were drawn from the objectives of the study. The theoretical framework of the study was based on the "Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge" (TPACK) theory which strives to capture some essential qualities of knowledge required by teachers for technology integration in their teaching. It also provides better feedback on student academic performance. TPACK emerges from understanding the intersection of content, pedagogy and technology knowledge underlying meaningful and deeply skilled teaching with the use of technology. Areas related to the study such as impact of CAI on students? academic performance, independent learning skill acquisition, gender and location, were reviewed. Some empirical studies were also reviewed. Research design used was the two by two pre-test post-test quasi experimental control group design. The targeted population was twenty-three thousand, four hundred and sixty Public Senior Secondary two (SS2) school students in twelve educational zones of Kaduna State. A stratified random sampling technique was adopted to draw two hundred SS2 Economics students from the rural and urban centres of two educational zones of the state. Economics Achievement Test (EAT) made up of forty items of multiple choice objectives and ten fill in the blank questions from two topics in Economics were developed and validated as test instrument for data collection. The six research questions were answered using statistical techniques such as: mean and standard deviation while the hypotheses were tested using co-variance and two sample t-test at 0.05 level of significance. The results amongst others revealed that students taught with the use of CAI performed significantly better than those taught without CAI. The result also shows that the use of CAI in teaching Economics is not significantly affected by school location. Three hypotheses were accepted while three were rejected. Based on the findings, it was concluded that school location does not affect the performance of Economics students with the use of CAI. It was therefore recommended amongst others that CAI programme be encouraged as an effective tool for teaching and learning of Economics in schools.