Abstract

The study investigated the effect of community resource management and teaching approach on students’ retention in secondary school biology in Nigeria. It adopted pretest-posttest non-equivalent control group design. It was guided by two research questions and three null hypotheses. The study had a population of 5,008 SSII Science students with a sample of 160 students comprising 66 male and 94 female students drawn using multistage sampling procedure. Biology Retention Test (BRT) was used for data collection. Its content validity was determined using test-blue print. Reliability of the instrument was ascertained using Kuder Richardson (K-R20) formula for estimate of internal consistency and test-retest method for estimate of temporal stability; and the correlation coefficients of 0.62 and 0.91 were obtained respectively. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses at a 0.05 level of significance. The results among others revealed that the use of community resources had significant effect on students’ retention in Biology irrespective of gender. There was also no significant interaction effect of teaching approach and gender on students’ retention in Biology. Based on the findings, the researchers recommended that, community resources should be used to improve students’ learning outcomes such as retention in Biology since their application is not gender prejudiced.

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