Effect of Concept Mapping Teaching Method on Secondary School Students' Acquisition of Life Skills through Religious Education in Ndhiwa Sub – county, Kenya

Abstract

Religious Education (RE) is a carrier subject of Life Skills content in Kenyan Secondary School Curriculum. The purpose of this study was to establish the effect of Concept Mapping teaching Method (CM) on secondary school students' acquisition of life skills through Religious Education in Ndhiwa Sub- County, Kenya. The study adopted a Quasi Experimental Research Design involving Solomon Four Non – Equivalent Group Design. The population of the study was all Form Four RE students in public co- educational day secondary schools. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 169 students and simple random sampling was used to determine four schools with similar characteristics to participate in the study. RE students' Life Skills Test was used to generate data. RE teachers were provided with a CM guide for teaching the experimental groups the selected RE topic. The reliability of the tool was estimated by use of Kuder Richardson's Formula and the reliability coefficient was .78. Data was analyzed with SPS. The research question was tested at α= .05 using a t- test. The study results indicated that CM positively affects secondary school students' acquisition of life skills. The t- test results indicated that the difference between the mean gains was statistically significant at .05 in favour of the experimental group. The study concluded that there is a significant relationship between the life skills acquisition of students taught RE using CM and those taught using the traditional methods. Teachers need to use CM to enhance their life skills pedagogical approaches so as to attain the intended objectives of learning RE.