Effectiveness of Discovery, Discussion and Lecture Methods of Teaching Social Studies in Delta State Primary Schools, Nigeria

Abstract

The study assessed and compared the effectiveness of three methods of teaching Social Studies (Discovery, Lecture and Discussion Methods) in Delta state primary schools. Quasi experimental design was adopted, a pretest and a post-test assessment test were designed for the study. Multistage sampling procedure was used to get samples of 150 primary school pupils offering Social Studies  and three (3) primary schools  in Ethiope west Local Government Area of Delta State, Nigeria. An instrument tagged Social Studies Achievement Test (SSAT) which consists of twenty (20) items was developed and used for the pretest and post-test assessment validated by experts and tested for reliability using the test re-test technique having a correlation index of 0.63 > 0.50.. The pupils were grouped in such a way that each selected school was subjected to teaching using these three methods of teaching.  A pre-test was administered to the pupils in all the three schools before teaching commenced and after teaching, a post-test was administered. Data that were collected from these tests were analyzed using the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Scheffe Post-Hoc Analysis. The results of the ANOVA of the differences in the scores of the pre-test and post-test were compared using the ANOVA Multiple Comparison for all the methods of teaching. The results revealed that there was a significant difference in the three methods of teaching with F-cal value of 4.070 and F-cri 2.06 at 0.05 level of significance. It also revealed that pupils taught with discovery method ( F-calculated value of 6.392) performed better in the SSAT than the pupils taught with lecture (F-calculated value of 2.726) and discussion methods with F-calculated value of 3.078. The study concluded that the discovery method enhanced better performance in Social Studies and recommended that the method that matches the needs of the pupils should be used to improve achievement level.