Previous studies show that when Nigerian adolescent girls, especially those in the Niger Delta, become pregnant they drop out of school and may never go back again but become low level labourers or miscreants to the society. This study investigated the extent of teenagers involvement in sex, pre-disposition of females to pregnancy in the Niger Delta of Nigeria, the level of readiness of parents to help their teenage daughters if they become pregnant, the level of sex education in secondary schools, the content and context of sex education in the Biology curriculum and how it is reflected in the National policy on education and also examined the need to review the policy vis-à-vis sex education. The study adopted a survey design using Likert-response questionnaires to elicit responses from students, parents, secondary school teenagers and Biology teachers. The results of the analysis using frequency counts, percentages, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that teenage pregnancy is on the increase in the Niger Delta, sex education is not given a place of priority in the Education National Policy, teachers shy away from teaching it in schools, parents do not support sex education in schools but there is an urgent need to incorporate it into the Biology curriculum.
The study determined the effectiveness of guided and open inquiry instructional strategies on the science process skills of students taught Biology in senior secondary schools in Osun State, Nigeria. It also compared the self-efficacy of students taught Biology using guided inquiry with those taught Biology using open inquiry instructional strategies in senior secondary school in Osun State. The goal was to provide empirical information on the effectiveness of guided and open inquiry strategies on students’ learning outcome in Biology. The study adopted the non-equivalent pretest posttest quasi-experimental research design. Two research instruments were used to collect data for the study namely, (i) Biology Process Skills Observation checklist (BPSOC) and (ii) Self-efficacy Rating Scale (SeRS). Data collected were analyzed using appropriate inferential statistics of analysis of Covariance. The results showed that there was no significant difference in the science process skills of Biology students exposed to Open Inquiry and those exposed to guided inquiry strategy (F= 0.785, p>0.05). The results also showed that a significant difference existed in the self-efficacy of students taught using Guided Inquiry and Open Inquiry strategies (F = 11.64, p < 0.05) as those exposed to Open Inquiry had the better self-efficacy score than the other groups as shown in the mean difference between open and guided inquiry strategies. The study concluded that Open inquiry strategy was more effective in improving the self-efficacy of the respondents but was not effective in improving the science process skills of respondents in the study area.
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