ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of advance organisers on the performance and retention of ecology concepts among senior secondary school students in Giwa educational zone. The study was conducted using a population of 145 students from G.S.S Kwangila (n=70) and G.S.S Basawa (n=75), using intact classes. The subjects through random sampling by balloting were assigned to experimental and control groups. A Quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group of pretest, post-test and delayed post-posttest design was used. The subjects were taught for six weeks using advance organisers and lecture methods for the experimental group and lecture method only for the control group. For the pretest, post test and delayed post posttest, the instrument used was the Ecology Concept Achievement Test (ECAT). Four null hypotheses were tested, t-test statistics was used to determine the level of significance of the two groups at P< 0.05. The major findings from the study indicates that: there is a significant difference in the mean academic performance scores of the experimental and control groups. There is a significant difference in the retention level of the students taught using advance organisers compared to those taught using lecture method only. Hypothesis 3 and 4 regarding gender issues; the use of advance organizers also favoured female students over the male students and female students slightly retained more than male students. Based on the findings of the research it was recommended that there should be training and retraining of biology teachers on the use and design of advance organizers, secondly advance organizer should be used by biology teachers in teaching in schools, also the use of advance organizers should be encouraged in co-educational schools since it is gender friendly.