EFFECT OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVIST LEARNING STRATEGY ON STUDENTS’ INTEREST IN BUSINESS STUDIES’ SIMULATION OF OFFICE ACTIVITIES IN TAI SELECTED SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of the Social Constructivist Learning Strategy on students' interest in the simulation of office activities in Business Studies in selected secondary schools in Tai Local Government Area, Rivers State. Three research questions and three null hypotheses guided the study. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest non-equivalent control group design was adopted. The population comprised 712 Junior Secondary School students offering Business Studies in the thirteen public secondary schools in Tai Local Government Area. A sample of 256 students was selected using the Taro Yamane formula and a multi-stage sampling procedure. Four public secondary schools were selected, with two assigned to the experimental group and two to the control group. The instrument for data collection was the Students' Interest Questionnaire (SIQ), developed by the researchers and validated by experts in Business Education and Measurement and Evaluation. The reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach Alpha, which yielded a coefficient of 0.87. The experimental group was taught office-activity simulation using the Social Constructivist Learning Strategy, while the control group was taught using the conventional method. Data collected were analysed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions, while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at the 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that students taught using the Social Constructivist Learning Strategy recorded a higher post-test mean interest score than those taught using the conventional method. The ANCOVA results showed a significant difference in the interest scores of students exposed to the Social Constructivist Learning Strategy and those taught using the conventional method. It was recommended among others that Business Studies teachers should adopt the social constructivist learning strategy in teaching office-activity simulation and that educational authorities should organize professional development programmes to equip teachers with social-constructivist instructional skills.