Teaching strategies impact on students’ self-efficacy development, a case of Ashanti Mampong municipality, Ghana high schools

This research study investigated the impact of concept mapping and cooperative instructional methods for enhancing students’ self-efficacy development towards biology in two selected Senior High Schools in Ashanti Mampong municipality of Ghana. The study utilized quasi-experimental research design involving a 3 x 2 multi-factorial analysis. The sample was obtained by using purposive sampling technique to select from an already existing six classes across the two selected schools to make a total of 500 participants for the study. Three adapted and modified instruments used for the study included student’s biology self-efficacy questionnaire (BSQ), Student verbal ability test items and the Students’ Biology Performance test (BPT). The data obtained were analyzed using the analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). The results indicated that, the treatment enhanced biology students’ self-efficacy development toward the subject Results again indicated that biology students’ performance had an impact on their self-efficacy development toward learning biological concepts. The effect of treatment interaction with student verbal ability test was observed not statistically significant for enhancing biology students’ self-efficacy development. The concept mapping and the cooperative learning methods therefore, improved biology students’ self-efficacy towards the subject in the two selected institutions. Hence, these two instructional strategies should be emphasized and enforced in the teaching and learning of biological concepts among all deprived science-based senior high school students in Ghana and where appropriate learning and teaching resources to solve the related problems are scarcely available.