Abstract
The study examined the effect of constructivist instructional approach on senior secondary biology students?EUR(TM) academic achievement in Adamawa State. Two research questions were formulated and two null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. Quasi experimental research design involving pre-test, post-test and control group was employed. The population of the study was all the senior secondary year one students (SSI) in Gombi education zone. Simple random sampling technique was used to select two intact classes with 100 biology students. The experimental group had 48 students (28 males and 20 females) while the control group had 52 students (35 males and 17 females). A 50-item Biology Achievement Test (BAT) was adopted from WAEC past question papers 2000-2018, used as an instrument for data collected. The instrument was subjected to face and content validity by experts. Cronbach?EUR(TM)s coefficient alpha was used in estimating the reliabilities for BCAT and reliability coefficient of 0.84 was obtained. The experimental group was taught the concept of cell and ecology through the constructivist instructional approach while the control group was taught the same topics through the expository teaching method. The treatment lasted for four weeks the research questions were analysed using mean and standard deviation while the hypotheses were tested using t-test at 0.05 level of significance. The finding shows that students taught through constructivist instructional approach performed better than those taught through expository teaching method. The male students in the experimental group performed better than those in the control group, also the female students in the experimental group performed better than those in the control group. The male students performed better than the female students in the experimental group. This indicates that there is a significant gender difference between male and female taught biology through the constructivist instructional approach. It was recommended that biology teachers should use the constructivist material approach which involves the students actively in constructing their knowledge and skills in the teaching/learning process of biology concepts.