Theater games and Grade 9 school for the arts students' achievement in Biology

Abstract

This quasi-experimental research study aimed at determining the effects of theater games as a teaching strategy on the biology achievement of Grade 9 learners in the School for the Arts (SA) Program. The match-paired sixty-nine (69) Grade 9 students who participated in the study were from of 2 class sections, with one class of 35 students exposed to traditional teaching (pure lecture—discussion method) while the other 34 students were exposed to biology instruction integrating theater games. These students were enrolled in a public junior high school during school year 2017 — 2018. The comparability of the two intact groups was tested in terms of their pretest scores in biology achievement. Conducted from June to August 2017, this study employed a validated teacher-made test in biology achievement with KR 20 reliability value of 0.806. The statistical tools utilized were means and standard deviation for descriptive analysis; while t-test for Independent Samples and t-test for Paired Samples, set at 0.05 level of significance, were used for inferential analysis. The results showed that the pre-test mean scores of the two groups were “average” while the post-test mean scores in biology achievement improved to “high” among students in the traditional teaching group, whereas the post-test mean score of those exposed to teaching integrating theater games was “very high.” Results further showed that significant differences existed in the pre-and post-test mean scores of both groups. Furthermore, there were remarkable increases in the mean gain scores of students exposed to both teaching strategies, with students exposed to biology teaching with the integration of theater games having significant impact/effect in contrast to those exposed to traditional teaching. This revealed that biology instruction with the integration of theater games was instrumental in the improvement of students’ achievement in biology.