Enhancing Students' Interest in Biology Through Demonstration and Instructional Analogy Teaching Methods in Delta State, Nigeria

This study investigated the effectiveness of demonstration and instructional analogy teaching methods in enhancing secondary school students' interest in Biology in Delta State, Nigeria. The study adopted a quasi-experimental pretest–posttest non-equivalent control group design involving two experimental groups (demonstration and instructional analogy) and one control group (lecture method). The population comprised 39,904 Senior Secondary School Two (SS II) Biology students in 474 public mixed secondary schools in Delta State. A sample of 298 students drawn from six public mixed secondary schools was selected using a stratified random sampling technique. Data were collected using the Biology Interest Scale (BIS), which yielded a Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient of 0.78. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA), Scheffé post hoc test, and independent samples t-test were used to test the hypotheses at the 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed a significant difference in the interest scores of students taught Biology using demonstration, instructional analogy, and lecture methods, with the demonstration method producing the highest level of students' interest. The Scheffé post hoc analysis further showed that the demonstration method was significantly more effective than both instructional analogy and lecture methods, whereas no significant difference existed between instructional analogy and lecture methods. The study also found no significant gender differences in the interest scores of students taught using either the demonstration or instructional analogy method. The study concluded that the demonstration method is the most effective instructional approach for enhancing students' interest in Biology. It was recommended that Biology teachers should adopt demonstration and instructional analogy teaching methods to promote students' interest in Biology.