COMPARATIVE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CONSTRUCTIVISM AND META LEARNING ON STUDENTS' ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AND RETENTION IN FINANCIAL ACCOUNTINGIN UNIVERSITIES IN ENUGU STATE

The study compared the effectiveness of constructivism and meta-learning on students’ academic achievement and retention in financial accounting in universities in Enugu State. Four research questions guided the study. Four null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design of pre-test, post-test, non-equivalent control group design. Intact classes were used and there was no randomization of the research subjects into control and experimental groups. The study was conducted in universities in Enugu State. The target population for the study comprised 123 year four accounting education students in the universities in Enugu State. There was no sampling due to manageable size of the population. The first instrument, Financial Accounting Achievement Test I (FAAT I) otherwise known as pre-test was administered to students in order to determine their entry level. The second instrument, Financial Accounting Achievement Test II (FAAT II) otherwise known as Post-test was used to determine the academic achievement scores of students after treatment. Lastly, Financial Accounting Achievement Test III (FAAT III) a reshuffled of FAAT II was used to test retention ability of students after two weeks of treatment. The instrument for data collection were validated by three research experts, two from Department of Business and Entrepreneurship Education and one expert in Measurement and Evaluation unit of Mathematics and Computer Education. The research experts are from Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT). A reliability coefficient of 0.80 was obtained using Kuder-Richardson formula 20 (K-R-20). The research questions were answered using mean with standard deviation. The hypotheses for the study were tested using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) at 0.05 level of significance. A null hypothesis of no significant difference was upheld when the p-value reached a significance level that was greater than or equal to 0.05. On the other hand, the null hypothesis of no significant difference was not upheld when the p-value was less than 0.05. Results from the findings showed that constructivist teaching method is more effective than meta-learning teaching method in improving academic achievement of year 4 students in Financial Accounting. In addition, constructivist teaching method also happens to be more effective for enhancing retention ability of students in Financial Accounting than meta-learning method. It was recommended among others that since the use of constructivist method enhance academic achievement of students in financial accounting in universities, the lecturers in universities in Enugu State should adopt the use of this method for instructional delivery. This should come as the new policy of government to be integrated in the curriculum.