Impact Of Indigenous Practices On Senior Secondary School Biology Students’ Achievement

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background Of The Study

Majority have claimed that students’ underperformance in biology at the undergraduate level is due to the poor background of biology from pre-university level, that the students find biology concepts very complicated. Tertiary institutions are finding it difficult to enroll sufficient numbers of candidates in biology departments because of dwindling number of students satisfying the entrance requirements (Takawira and Admire, 2012). This have shown adverse effects on the advancement of science and technology in the country. Biology educators echo that curriculum for secondary school biology should be designed to give students the opportunity to be actively involved in the process of learning (Oladejo, 2020). This will enable students to solve and decide their daily life problems based on scientific attitudes and noble values. It will also help to develop a dynamic and viable community in line with the latest scientific information and technologies (Ratamun and Osman, 2018). Thus, the biology curriculum should lay emphasis on the acquisition of knowledge and mastery of science process skills through practical learning approaches (Akinola, & Oladejo, 2020; Okebukola, 2016).

Indigenous knowledge refers to the local knowledge that is unique to a given culture and acquired by local people through the accumulation of experiences, informal experiments, and intimate understanding of the environment in a given culture. It encompasses the technology, social,economic and philosophical, learning and governance systems of a community (Chikaire, Osuagwu, Ihenacho, Oguegbuchulam, Ejiogu-Okereke and Obi, 2012).The absence of scientific knowledge in rural communities created value in the use of indigenous knowledge to meet needs, manage changes in seasons, disaster situations, food security and ultimately in environmental preservation (Siambombe, Mutale and Muzingili, 2018). In Africa, Indigenous Knowledge are holistic and produces a deep understanding of the interrelationships among the different elements of a habitat (Eyong, 2007). There is need to rethink development with traditional knowledge so as to build the local indigenous knowledge (Odero, 2011).

For thousands of years, the African indigenous knowledge systems existed and have their own education systems, long before western education was introduced by the European colonialists and missionaries. The introduction of the western educations meant that learners faced the conflicting demands of the new education and those of their home cultures, because the purpose, content, and processes of knowledge transmission conflicts with those of indigenous education (Abah, Mashebe and Denuga, 2015). In the various tribes of the world, there exists indigenous knowledge that can be meaningfully integrated into the western school curricula for improved learning outcome. Additionally, it was argued that education cannot exclude cultural knowledge, since the content of education has societal value underpinning that is associated with a particular culture (Kaino, 2013).Attempts to improve teachers’ understanding of the nature of science or the nature of IKS without helping them to translate this knowledge into classroom practice have been found to be inadequate (Nichol and Robinson, 2000; Ogunniyi, 2004). Several studies have further shown that the most effective way to get teachers to understand the nature of science is to engage them in long-term mentoring, dialogues and explicitly reflective instructional approaches (Ogunniyi, 2007).

Several authors have submitted that in order for schools and curricula to positively respond to the need of making teaching and learning more culturally inclusive; there will be a need for a paradigm shift from the current predominantly Euro-centric curricula and school systems of African (Thaman, 2009; Pene, Taufe’ulungaki and Benson, 2002; Johannson-Fua, 2006). However, it was opined that this paradigm shift is a challenge for teachers who are expected to mediate the interface between the different cultural systems of meanings and values that continue to exist in their schools.

Consequently, the learners’ prior knowledge becomes detached from the idea being promoted by the school curriculum and in order to progress with the school system (passing and being promoted to the next class), most African children tend to memorize the theory but lack the application expected to differentiate the educated and non-educated citizens in a society. So, it is important that African education developers evolve strategies such as integrating the indigenous knowledge system in the teaching of sciences which has the potential to make our education culturallyinclusive and make the teaching and learning of science easier for both teachers and the learners (Abah, Mashebe and Denuga, 2015; Ademola et al., 2022).

Dass and Yager (2009) submitted that teachers need to create a suitable environment by employing strategies that encourage active student participation in identification of issues, concepts and relationships which will be far more effective than the traditional practices whereby students are passive recipients of knowledge with no cognitive involvement in the learning process. Besides, the most important derivatives of learning are knowledge retention and application to real life situations outside the classroom. Cakir (2008) opined that in order to learn a concept meaningfully,students must carry out cognitive processes that construct relations among the elements of information in the concept to promote conceptual learning over rote memorization.

One of the broad aims of secondary school education in Nigeria is the raising up of a generation of people who can think for themselves, respect the views and feelings of others, respect the dignity of labour, appreciate those values specified under Nigeria’s broad national goals and live as good citizens. (NPE, 2014). The above national goal could be achieved only if biology is meaningfully taught in order to ensure continued interest of learners in the subject. Since the knowledge of biology is central to vocations and professions in health services, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, food processing, teaching services and extractive industries (Bamidele et al, 2013), effective teaching and acquisition of lasting knowledge in biology will be of high value in the above-mentioned fields of practice and in its long-term productivity for science and technology cum economic growth.

The goal of any teacher is to ensure that students learn and learn meaningfully. The attainment of this goal is pursued through a variety of ways including using pedagogical tools that best suit the context where the curriculum is being delivered (Okebukola, 2020; Oladejo et al., 2021). Another view is that, some students that manage to comprehend (one way or the other) the taught concept(s) tend to forget what they have learnt within a surprisingly short period of time. Thisshows that even when learning has successfully taken place, students forget probably due to low retentive level or personal negligence or even inability to internalize knowledge. It has been noticed that they also find it difficult to transfer and link or relate knowledge synonymous to other subjects (such as biology, Physics, Agricultural Science etc) in relation to the concepts learnt in biology (Adebayo et al., 2022; Emendu, 2014). Therefore, learning does not end at knowledge comprehension but also a reasonable degree of retention capacity of the acquired knowledge is required for further development of the previous knowledge and learning advancement as the previous knowledge is prerequisite to the new knowledge (Abdulhadi et al., 2022; Dansu, 2017).

Biology is an abstract subject for both teachers and students possibly because of the ways it is taught and learnt - not relating it to day to day activities of the learner. This has resulted in students’ poor performance in the subject. The teaching is isolated from indigenous knowledge and practices. This is quite unhelpful to the teaching of biology for according to Thornton (2008), biology controls the peoples’ way of live. The science of biology is being practiced with the environmental resources within the context of indigenous knowledge at different levels of human societies across the globe unknowingly. In Nigeria for instance, notable biology concepts have their origin in many and diverse indigenous knowledge and practices of the people. These and many other biology concepts are unknowingly practiced indigenously but in isolation from biology as a school science subject. It therefore, becomes imperative to integrate indigenous knowledge and practices of the people in the society into biology teaching in order to dispel the notion that the subject is abstract and has no relevance to common daily activities; hence this study (Oladejo et al., 2022; Ugwu and Diovu, 2016).

1.2 Statement Of The Problem

It has been observed that Students’ academic achievement in biology in senior secondary school certificate examination has been persistently poor (West African Examination Council, 2017). This poor result is not unconnected with the notion that biology is known as an abstract subject that has no relevance to common daily living (Umoh, 2009). The science of biology though practiced unknowingly in everyday life of the people is isolated from school biology teaching. The students’ life experiences are neither integrated into the classroom nor linked with biology concepts.. The local knowledge/experiences are abandoned for modern science. Consequently, biology becomes difficult to understand and so seen as abstract.

The abandonment of indigenous knowledge and practices of the society in science for academic ways of teaching and learning makes the science of biology abstract to science students today. Efforts are made towards indigenization of science through improvised local materials (Achimugu, as cited in Abonyi, 2002) and use of mother tongue in science instruction (Fafunwa, as cited in Abonyi, 2002) in Nigeria. These notwithstanding, many science students still maintain that biology is abstract and perform very poorly in school.