DIFFICULT TOPICS IN SCHOOL BIOLOGY AS PERCEIVED BY STUDENTS IN EGOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA

The purpose of the study was to examine the difficult topics in school biology as perceived by students in Egor local government area, Edo state. The study was motivated from the consistent decline of students performance in biology. The aim of the study is to identify the specific Biology topics students perceive as difficult, examine the factors responsible for their difficulties, and suggest possible solutions to enhance the teaching and learning of Biology. The descriptive survey design was adopted for this study. The population comprise of about (18,207) Secondary School students across Egor local government area with SS2 students as focus. A simple random sampling technique was used to select a sample of 120 students from five secondary schools schools in Egor(three public and two private). A self structured questionnaire with four sections were used as research Instrument to collect data from the sample population. The validity of the instrument was confirmed by the supervisor and the reliability of the instrument was tested using the test-retest method. The questionnaire was administered physically to respondents and a period of one week was used for administration and collection of questionnaires. The data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics involving frequency counts and percentage. The findings of the study revealed that a higher population of the SS2 students perceived majority of their topics as difficult. Topics such as Adaptation, Ecology and Microorganisms were perceived as difficult by majority of the students. The factors behind these difficulties as stated by the respondents were high technicality of terms, abstract nature of the topics and lack of practical demonstrations. Furthermore various guidelines were outlined such as use of more practical demonstrations and experiments in the teaching process, use of visual aids and simplification of terms and curricula in order to enhance the understanding of these difficult topics and improve the general teaching and learning of biology. The researcher concludes that indeed there is a high level of difficulty in the understanding of major biology and topics by secondary school students which inquires the intervention of both the teachers, school management, Education bodies(FME, NERDC, WAEC, etc) as well as the students themselves who are expected involve themselves in peer/group discussion and learning and also learn to apply intrinsic motivation towards their studies. Everyone has a role to play in order to mitigate this problem of difficulty in understanding biology topics. The roles the aforementioned are expected to play in order to actualise this are mentioned in the subsequent chapters.