EFFECT OF DRAMA ON JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN FAMILY LIFE AND HIV/AIDS EDUCATION

This study focused on the effect of drama on junior secondary school students’ achievement in Family Life and HIV/AIDS Education (FLHE). The FLHE curriculum is new in Nigerian schools and an experiment on a new method of teaching it as well as through a carrier curriculum like English Language becomes a challenge to the core subject teacher. The purpose of this study therefore was to explore the effects of drama on the achievement of students in FLHE. The study adopted a quasi-experimental, non- equivalent control group design. The population for the study comprised all 36,922 students of JS II in all 28 public junior secondary schools within Akure South Local Government Area of Ondo State, South-West Nigeria. The sample consisted of 180 JS II students from four schools that were stratified into urban/rural sections with each having a school assigned to the treatment and control groups respectively. Instructional materials used by teachers trained for the research included training packages for both groups based on NERDC English Language/FLHE curricula and scripted process drama, ‘Police Alert’ for the experimental groups, respectively. A validated 40-item FLHE Achievement Test (FLHEAT) instrument used, sought information on gender, location, religious belief, knowledge issues on abstinence, body abuse, stigmatization/discrimination, and comprehension skills. The reliability index of the instrument using the test-retest procedure, yielded .86 after two weeks interval, with the Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Co-efficient. 5 research questions were answered using the mean and standard deviation while the 5 null hypotheses were tested using Analysis of Co-Variance (ANCOVA) at 0.05 level of probability. Results show that the mean achievement score of the students taught FLHE using drama was greater than that of those taught using the lecture method. Tested HO1 shows that there was significant difference (p < 0.05) in the FLHE mean achievement score of the students taught using drama and that of those taught using the lecture method. Therefore, the null HO1 was rejected, while the null HO2, HO3, and HO4 failed to reject and as such were accepted, meaning that gender, location, religion each has no significant effect on students’ achievement in FLHE. HO5 as well, confirmed that the interaction effects of method on gender, location and religion were not significant on students’ achievement in FLHE (P>0.05). This research has ascertained that students’ achievement can be enhanced using process drama. Subsequently, recommendations made include the need for governments to train teachers in using process drama technique in place of other non-effective methods, and that curriculum experts should integrate process drama structures in their works.