EFFECTS OF BUZZ GROUPS AND CASE-BASED LEARNING STRATEGIES ON STUDENT’S ATTITUDE TO OVERPOPULATION, CONSERVATION AND WASTE MANAGEMENT CONCEPTS IN BIOLOGY

Olajide Saidat Bolaji

Department of Integrated Sciences

Mufutau Lanihun College of Education, Ibadan, Nigeria.

Email: sbolajide@gmail.com

                                                                  ABSTRACT

In spite of different instructional strategies employed by Biology teachers in teaching Biology has consistently led to low students attitude to the subject. Hence, need to employ Buzz groups and case-based instructional strategies. This study therefore, investigated the effect of buzz groups and case-based learning strategies on students’ attitude to overpopulation, conservation and waste management concepts in biology. Experimental – control group design involving pretest and posttest was used for the study. The population consists of 121 students. Three schools from three local governments were selected by stratified random sampling technique. The instruments used for data collection are Student Biology Attitude Questionnaire (SBAQ) with reliability coefficient of 0.80, Mental Ability Test (MAT), with reliability coefficient of 0.87; Null hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance. The data collected were analyzed using inferential statistics of Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) of the posttest scores with the pretest scores as the covariates and Scheffe post hoc analysis were obtained. There is significant effect of treatment on students’ attitude to conservation, waste management and over population (F_{(2, 108)} = 105.26; p < .05). The result shows that case-based had higher adjusted mean of 79.24, Buzz Group had higher adjusted mean of 73.00, while the control group had higher adjusted mean of 57.14. Based on these findings, it was recommended that Biology teachers should adopt the methodology involve in Buzz group and Case-based strategy as the two strategies that are essentially effective for the improving attitude to Biology.