Using Guided Discovery to Improve Students’ Retention and Academic Attitudes to Financial Accounting Concepts

Abstract

Financial Accounting is one of the specialised subjects in the Nigerian senior secondary school curriculum. It is no gain saying that without apposite comprehension of the subject, the goals of its inclusion in the curriculum might not be fully accomplished. Hence, the researchers are in quest of appropriate instructional strategies that entail students’ active participation and improve students’ learning outcomes (attitude and retention) through practice-oriented research. Consequently, this research determined the effectiveness of guided discovery instructional strategy, in relation to a conventional lecture, on learning outcomes of students in Financial Accounting concepts. This study adopted a nonrandomized pretest, posttest, control group quasiexperimental design with a 2 × 2 × 3 factorial design. 147 secondary school students in level 5 were selected from eight secondary schools in the northern part of a Southwestern state, Nigeria. The research instruments used were Teachers’ Instructional Guides on Guided Discovery, Students’ Attitude to Financial Accounting Questionnaire (r = 0.89) and a 30-item Financial Accounting Retention Test (r = 0.83). The analyzed data affirmed that the treatment improved students’ attitude (F(1,134) = 344.935; p<0.05; η2 = 0.720) and retention (F(1,134) = 385.431; p<0.05; η2 = 0.742) of accounting concepts. This study recommended that teachers should utilize the guided discovery strategy to develop attitudes and knowledge retention of learners in Financial Accounting.