Article Details

This study investigated the effect of practical activities on students’ science process skill acquisition. Two research questions and two null hypotheses, tested at 0.05 level of significance, guided the study. The study was carried out in Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. The treatment consisted of teaching a selected biology concept “Cell and its environment” to an experimental group using practical activities and a control group using the teacher demonstration method. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design; specifically, the non-equivalent control group design. The population for the study comprised 7,158 senior secondary one (SS1) biology students in FCT, Abuja. The Sampling was Multistage involving purposive and simple random sampling techniques, to draw 131 SS1 biology students from two co-educational public senior secondary schools in the area. The instrument, Science Process Skill Acquisition Test (SPSAT), was used for data collection. The reliability coefficient of SPSAT was established using Kuder Richardson formula-KR20 was found to be 0.74. The data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result of the study revealed that practical activities had significant effect on students’ Science Process Skills Acquisition scores with (F=15.175, p =0.000<0.05) in favour of practical activity group when taught cell and its environment. The result also revealed that gender has no significant effect on students’ Science Process Skills acquisition scores with (F=0.086, p=0.770>ɚ = 0.05) when students were taught cell and its environment using practical activities. In line with the findings of the study, it was recommended, among others, that Biology teachers should be encouraged to adopt practical activities in teaching Biology concepts in order to promote science process skill acquisition necessary for enhancing 21st century skills. Also, the curriculum planners should incorporate more practical activities in Biology curriculum in order to promote students’ interest and achievement in Biology.