CULTURAL BELIEFS AS A CORRELATE OF PERFORMANCE IN BIOLOGY AMONG SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN NIGER STATE NIGERIA

Abstract

The study examined the cultural beliefs as a correlates of student's performance in Biology among Senior Secondary Schools in Niger State, Nigeria. The study adopted multi method research designs which comprises of Expo-facto design, co- relational design descriptive survey research design. The population for the study was made up of the entire SS II Biology Sudent's in Niger State therefore, the target population is 49,031. The purposive and simple random sampling techniques were adopted on 381 Biology shudent's in Niger State, Nigeria. Two research questions and their corresponding hypotheses were formulaed and tested at 0.05 alpha level to guide the study. The questionnaire was administered to the sampled student's, and the researcher collected the student's performance result in Biology to correlate with. The reliability of the instrument was determined using the result from the pilot study and Cronbach alpha formula yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.92. The data collected were analyzed using the linear regression, sandard deviation, Pearson Product Moment Correlation and regression analhsis The finding of the study revealed that there is a significant difference between the achievement scores of male and female students in favour of the female students, also it showed that school location had a significant main effect on students' cognitive attainment performance in practical skills. Based on these findings, the study recommended among others that the Science Educator should endeavor to relate science more closely to the learner 's societ al, or cultural environment so as to minimize the conflicts that might arise from the student views of the world and that of biology. Government and other organizations should support any association in it's effort to eradicate negative beliefs and discrimination against gender and school location.