EFFECT OF ACTIVITY-BASED INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGY ON STUDENTS' ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN BUSINESS STUDIES IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN AWKA SOUTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF ANAMBRA STATE

Business Studies is a foundational subject offered at the junior secondary school level in Nigeria. It is designed to equip students with essential knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to understand the world of business and function effectively in personal, academic, and occupational settings. This study investigated the effect of activity-based instructional strategy on students’ academic achievement in Business Studies in public secondary schools in Awka South Local Government Area of Anambra State. Two research questions and three hypotheses guided the study. This study employed a quasi-experimental research design, specifically a non-randomized pretest-posttest control group design. The population of this study consisted of all the 541 junior secondary school two (JSS2) Business Studies students in Awka Education Zone of Anambra State. The sample for this study consisted of 120 JSS2 Business Studies students (59 in the experimental group, 61 in the control group) from two (2) schools, selected using a multi-stage sampling procedure, out of the 18 public secondary schools in Awka South L.G.A. The instruments used for data collection for this study were the Business Studies Achievement Test (BSAT). Face and content validation of the instruments were established by three experts, one from the Measurement and Evaluation Unit of the Department of Educational Foundations, the second in the Department of Technical and Vocational Education, all from the Faculty of Education, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, and the other, a Basic Education Business Studies teacher. The instrument's reliability coefficient was 0.89, obtained using the Kuder-Richardson 20 (K-R 20) formula. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, and two-way Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses at the 0.05 alpha level. The study found, among other things, that students taught Business Studies concepts using an activity-based instructional strategy achieved higher academic achievement than their counterparts in the conventional lecture method. The findings also revealed a statistically significant difference between the mean achievement scores of students taught using an activity-based instructional strategy and those taught using the conventional lecture method. The study recommended, among others, that Business Studies teachers should be encouraged to adopt an activity-based instructional strategy in teaching students to help them achieve better outcomes and develop better retention in the subject.