Effect of Concept Mapping on Students’ Academic Achievement in Financial Accounting in Secondary Schools in Abia State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated the effect of concept mapping on students’ academic achievement in financial accounting in secondary schools in Abia State, Nigeria. Three research questions guided the study. Three null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted a quasiexperimental design of pre-test, post-test, non-equivalent control group design. Intact classes were used and there was no randomization of the research subjects into control and experimental groups. The target population for the study comprises 4,123 Senior Secondary two (SS2) students in the public secondary schools in Abia State. Simple random sampling technique was used to obtain a sample size of 364 students. Four co-educational schools were purposively sampled out of two hundred and ninety-two (292) secondary schools. Two intact classes were randomly sampled in each school and one of them was used for Experimental and the other for Control. The instrument for data collection was validated by three research experts. A reliability coefficient of 0.71 was obtained using Kuder-Richardson formula 20 (K-R- 20). The research questions were answered using mean with standard deviation. The hypothesis for the study were tested using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) at 0.05 level of significance. The pre-test scores and post-test scores were subjected to data analysis using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 20.0. Results from the findings showed that concept mapping method appreciably increased academic achievement gains of SS II students in financial account than conventional lecture method. The study revealed that in teaching of financial accounting using concept mapping, male students significantly performed better than their female counterparts. It was recommended among others that since the use of concept mapping learning strategy enhances academic achievement in financial accounting in secondary schools, the teachers should adopt the use of concept mapping for instructional delivery.