Background to the Study
At the College of Education level, business education is one of the programmes that provide its recipients with knowledge, skills, understanding and attitude needed to compete favourably in the business world as producers or consumers of goods and services. According to Iwu (2016), business education is an academic programme that is designed to develop the individual‟s cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains in following skills: teaching skills, secretarial/office skills, marketing skills, entrepreneurial skills, human relation/ communication skills, general business knowledge and accounting skills for self –reliance. One of the major courses under a well-planned business education programme is Financial Accounting. Financial Accounting, according to Agboh (2017) is the classification and recording of monetary transactions and presentation of the financial results of the activities of an entity. It deals with the process of capturing, processing and communicating financial information. It is an information system that measures, processes and communicates financial information of an identifiable economic entity for use by management and other interested parties. Aghoh also opined that Financial Accounting is very imperative to the Nigerian economy as it provides the basis for preparing future entrepreneurs, accountants, managers, and financial controllers. The knowledge of Financial Accounting is necessary in every endeavour because it deals with records of one‟s income and 1 2 expenditure which are very vital in any serious business. This is why Talatu (2014) posited that everybody irrespective of the social class requires the knowledge of Financial Accounting to meet every day-to-day activities. The objectives of Financial Accounting, according to Agboh (2017) include: to give students additional vocational skills that will enhance their opportunities for future occupational success, so that the students will become proficient in financial transactions and management and also to equip students with better understanding of business practices and procedures and provide vocational training in the practical knowledge of daily book-keeping activities. Thus, the students will understand the cycles and steps involved in Financial Accounting as well as their relations. It is expected that the business accounting graduates of Colleges of education would be able to successfully manage their own business outfit with the acquired Financial Accounting skills, in order to contribute their quota to Nigeria‟s economic growth and development. Unfortunately, one may be constrained to contend that the achievement of the above elaborated objectives is defeated as a result of the continuous poor achievement and low retention of students in Financial Accounting (Azih & Nwosu, 2011). Achievement scores represents performance outcomes and indicates the extent to which a person has accomplished specific goals that were the focus of activities in instructional environments, specifically in school, college, and university (Okolocha & Okeke, 2018). Achievement scores in the context of 3 this study is the outcome of students‟ effort or achievement in examination. It could be high, average or low/poor. Oladejo, Olosunde, Ojebisi and Isola (2011) described poor achievement scores as any achievement that falls below a desired standard. Students‟ poor achievement scores in Financial Accounting has been observed from literature to be caused by many factors such as teachers‟ insensitivity to the nature of Financial Accounting when planning instructional activities in classroom (Miles, 2015), inadequate instructional materials and ineffective/poor teaching methods (Obidile, Amobi, Uzokwe & Akuezilo, 2017). Umar (2017) observed that teachers‟ predominant usage of conventional method of instruction in Financial Accounting may be a contributory cause of students‟ failure in the course. The resultant effect is low achievement scores and low retention ability in students‟ learning outcome. According to Safo, Ezenwa and Wushishi (2013), retention is the ability to keep or retain the knowledge of what is learnt and able to recall it when it is required. It is the ability of a student to recall and apply knowledge acquired in school to similar situations outside the school. Some studies have reported the effects of different forms of pedagogy on retention of learning. For instance, Aina and Keith (2015) reported retention of learning was more with one method of teaching than the other. Also, Wynn, Mosholderand and Larsen (2014) found out that there was no significant difference in students‟ knowledge retention using different methods of teaching except after a long time. Retention helps in knowledge development. Knowledge development can be guaranteed when effective teaching method(s) is/are used in the teaching and learning to enable 4 students internalize what has been taught. The teaching method employed by the teacher could be a strong determinant of students‟ level of retention and achievement scores. Ezenwosu and Nworgu (2013) noted that most teachers in Colleges of education adopted traditional lecture method which is an oral presentation of ideas, concepts and principles to the students. Jimoh (2014) noted lecture method is a teaching method where a pre-packaged instructional content is delivered by the teacher to a large audience. Jimoh also noted that the lecture method provides an economical and efficient method for delivering substantial amounts of information to large number of students. In the word of Atieh (2013), explained that lecture method is an instructional strategy which affords teacher the opportunity to present a wide content to a large class of students with minimal students-teacher interaction. The characteristics of lecture method include the following: teacher-centred, teacher-active, learner-passive, content emphasis, large class size, wide content of instruction and minimal use of chalkboard and low level of interaction (Abdullahi 2013). Ezenwosu and Nworgu opined that the strategy is concerned with how much ground is covered by the teacher before examination. Going by the above features, lecture method is inappropriate for teaching some skill oriented subjects like Financial Accounting because students are deprived of active participation in the learning process and they have very little or no interaction among themselves and the teacher. 5 To improve on students‟ achievement scores and retention in Financial Accounting, there is need for student centred teaching methods that enable the learners to reason, develop creative skills, discover facts and develop selfconfidence in solving problems . Eze, Ezenwafor and Obidile (2016) opined that student-centred methods/strategies could improve students‟ academic performance in different subjects better than teacher-centred methods/strategies. The authors stressed further that student-centred teaching methods/strategies are characterized by active involvement of students in the teaching and learning process. Examples of student-centred teaching methods/strategies include Justin-time teaching, Peer Instructional strategy, problem-based method among others. This study will focus on Just-in-time teaching and Peer instructional strategies because they are not only student centred, but also innovative, constructive and cooperative teaching and learning strategies. Just in Time Teaching Strategy (JiTT) is a teaching and learning strategy based on the interaction between web-based study assignments and an active learner classroom (Novak, 2014). It embodies a combination of a flipped classroom and technological and formative assessments to create an interactive learning experience for students. Just-in-time teaching actively involves students in the learning process through a two-step series of learning activities. In the first step, students complete a focused set of activities outside of class (usually via interactive Web documents) and submit their work to the instructor. In the second step, the instructor (often just hours before the next lecture) collects the students' responses and identifies areas of understanding and 6 misunderstanding to adjust the next lesson so that students can receive specific “just-in-time” feedback on those particular areas. Just-in-time Teaching (JITT), which is an exciting new strategy engages students by using feedback from preclass web assignments. In this process, the students are more in control of the learning process and become more active and interested learners (Brame, 2019). This is unlike the Peer Instructional Learning Strategy Peer Instructional (PI) Strategy on the other hand is an interactive teaching strategy that promotes classroom interaction to engage students and address difficult aspects of the material (Mazur & Watkins 2010). PI provide a structured environment for students to voice their idea and resolve misunderstanding by talking with their peers. PI is more effective at developing students‟ conceptual understanding than traditional lecture-based instruction. PI therefore increases conceptual learning and traditional problem-solving skills. Gok (2012) explained that PI encourages students to take responsibility for their learning and emphasize understanding. According to Abubakar and Arshad (2015), students could learn more when they take responsibility for their learning. This they could do irrespective of their gender. Gender refers to all the characteristics of male and female which describes behaviours or attributes expected of individuals on the basis of being either a male or female in a given society (Eze, 2014). Gender differences and achievement scores of student in schools have been one of the topical issues in the academic debate currently. Gender as adopted in this study refers to 7 categorization of human beings into males and females. There have been conflicting findings on how gender influences the achievement scores of students. It seems that gender varies according to subjects. For instance, Olorode and Jimoh (2016) found that male and female students achieve and retain concepts differently as a result of cultural and traditional reasons. Adebayo and Judith (2014)found that male students achieved and retained higher in Financial Accounting than female students. However, Olarinye (2015) reported no significant difference in the academic performance of students in accounting as a result of gender. Relative effectiveness is the extent to which an intervention does more good than harm compared with one or more alternative interventions under the usual circumstance (Jimoh, 2014). Relative effectiveness of JiTT and PI strategies on students‟ achievement scores and retention in Financial Accounting therefore can be seen as the extent to which JiTT strategy improved students‟ achievement scores and retention in Financial Accounting more than PI strategy and vice versa. JiTT and PI strategies are both cooperative teaching and learning strategies that can improve students‟ achievement and retention in Financial Accounting. It is with this background that this study on relative effectiveness of JiTT and PI on students‟ achievement and retention in Financial Accounting in colleges of education in Anambra State was conceived.
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