INTERCONNECTION RESULTANT EFFECT OF TWO INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES, MENTAL ABILITY AND GENDER, ON LEARNERS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN ABSTRACT CONCEPTS IN BIOLOGY

This study looked at how students' success in grasping abstract concepts in biology was affected by cognitive capacity, Gender, and two different teaching philosophies (project and Inquiry)—a quasi-experimental paradigm known as the pretest-posttest control group design was employed in the study. 120 SSII Biology students were split into treatment and control groups. The students came from six coeducational schools in two Local Government Areas in Kwara State. The tests were the Biology Students Mental Ability Test (r=0.87), the test measuring understanding of abstract concepts in biology (r=0.86), and instructional manuals on inquiry and project techniques. At the 0.05 significance level, three research questions and three hypotheses were examined. The collected data were analyzed using a covariance study, which found that there was a significant 3-way interconnection (interaction effect) between treatment, mental capacity, and gender and learners' accomplishment in abstract ideas in biology (F2,107) = 5.757, P> 0.05). Low mental ability female students (x ̅=24.00) had a lower mean score in project strategy than low mental ability male students ((x) ̅=24.43). In the inquiry strategy, low mental ability male students' mean score (x ̅ = 22.33) was superior to that of low mental ability female students (x ̅ = 20.75); in contrast, the conventional Strategy's mean score (x ̅ = 14.33) for low mental ability male students was superior to that of high mental ability female students (x ̅ = 13.47). The study's conclusions led to the recommendation that project and inquiry methodologies be used to raise students' mental ability and achievement in abstract concepts in biology, among others.