THE EFFECT OF ROLE-PLAY METHOD ON THE STUDENT INTEREST AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL IN IKWO LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, EBONYI STATE.

Abstract

There is a perceived trend of poor academic achievement and interest of students in Christian Religious Studies in Nigeria schools today. This situation has been attributed to many factors one of which is poor method of teaching. Against this background that this study sought to assess the effect of role play method on students’ academic achievement and interest of students in Christian Religious Studies in Ikwo L.G.A of Ebonyi State. It adopted quasi experimental design. Three research questions guided the study. The population of the study comprised of all students in the L.G.A of study. Purposive sampling technique was used to select one hundred and twenty (120) students from four co-educational schools (70 students for experimental group (31 males and 39 females) and 50 students for control group (17 males and 33 females)) for the study. The instrument for data collection was CRS Achievement Test (CRSAT) and CRS Interest Inventory (CRSII). Mean and standard deviation was used to answer the research questions while analysis of co-variance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at an alpha level of 0.05. The results of the data analyzed revealed that there is a significant difference in the mean achievement scores of students taught CRS using role-play method and those taught using lecture methods in favour of group taught CRS using role-play method. The result equally revealed that gender is not significant on student’s achievement in CRS and that role play instructional strategy is gender friendly. Based on these findings, recommendations and suggestions for further studies were made therein.