ABSTRACT
Home Economics education is expected to build children in every domain of learning at the junior secondary school level. The instructional design approaches employed by the respective teachers may cause the attainment of this expectation to vary. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to investigate the effect of instructional design approaches on the cognitive and affective performances of junior secondary school Home Economics students in Benin Metropolis. The study explored three instructional design approaches, namely behaviorism, cognitivism and constructivism. The study raised and answered thirteen research questions and tested eleven null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted a Quasi Experimental Design (pre-test and post-test, nonequivalent, control group, between-subjects design). All 5688 students in the 75 state-owned schools in Benin metropolis during the 2022/2023 academic session formed the population of the study. A sample size of 168 students in the intact JSS2 classes of three junior secondary schools participated in this study. They were selected following a multistage sampling technique. Instructional and measuring instruments were used in this study. Instructional instruments included the scheme of work, instructional designs based on Analyse-Design-Develop-Implement-Evaluate (ADDIE) model, lesson plans drafted from the designs, teaching aids specified by each design, and formative assessments. Measuring instruments included Home Economics Cognitive Performance Test (HECPT) and the Home Economics Affective Performance Test (HEAPT). HECPT comprised 30 researcherdesigned and moderately difficult multiple-choice questions with four options (one valid answer and three distractors) and had pre-test and post-test versions. HEAPT contained 30 statement items on the affective levels of learners on a modified, forced-choice, four-point Likert scale of agreement, and had pre-test and post-test versions. The instruments were subjected to content and face validity by the researcher's supervisor and four other experts. For internal consistency, HECPT had a Kuder-Richardson value of 0.62, a difficulty index of 64.87 and a discriminatory power of 0.30, while HEAPT had a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.85. For stability, HECPT had a correlation coefficient of 0.63, while HEAPT had a coefficient of 0.70. The study began with the conduct of a pilot study, followed by pre-testing, treatment and post-testing phases. Ethical considerations were observed, and extraneous variables were controlled. Data collected by administering HECPT, HEAPT and formative assessments were cleansed and analysed with Two-Way Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA), Partial Correlation and Multiple Linear Regression analysis. The major findings of the study were that after controlling covariates, cognitive performance was higher among female than male students (𝑥 m female = 14.90; 𝑥 m male = 14.16), and highest among those taught with cognitivist instructional design (𝑥 m cog = 14.89; 𝑥 m cons = 14.85; 𝑥 m beh = 13.85). Affective performance was higher among female students (𝑥 m female = 93.30; 𝑥 m male = 90.20), and highest among those taught with cognitivist instructional design (𝑥 m cog = 94.99; 𝑥 m cons = 91.27; 𝑥 m beh = 88.97). In terms of effect, the only significant source of effect on the cognitive performance of students is their pre-test cognitive performance (F = 42.986, ρ ≥ 0.00, η2 = 0.28), and the significant sources of effect on the affective performance of students are their pre-test affective performance (F = 12.136, ρ ≥ 0.00, η2 = 0.10), and instructional design used (F = 3.267, ρ ≥ 0.04, η2 = 0.05). The only significant predictor of cognitive performance is pre-test cognitive performance (βust = 0.630, t = 6.79, ρ ≥ 0.00), and thate of affective performance is pre-test affective performance (βust = 0.297, t = 4.06, ρ ≥ 0.00). From the findings of this study, it is concluded that cognitivist approach produced the best cognitive and affective perofmances, instructional design had a significant effect on only the affective performance of students, xv and performance in these two domains can only be predicted by students’ respective pretest performance in each of them. It was therefore recommended that Home Economics teachers at junior secondary schools should adopt the cognitivist approach to instructional design, while paying attention to the ensuring the complementary development of the cognitive and affective domains of learners. Similarly, gender disparity in Home Economics class should be discouraged by teachers, school administrators.
