Implementing Innovative Instructional Strategies: Practical Application in Nigerian Classroom

The study examined innovative instructional strategy and secondary school students’ performance in English Language in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Nigeria. Two objectives, two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. The design for the study was quasi-experimental design using pretest and posttest design, with one experimental group taught using innovative instructional strategy and a control group taught using the traditional lecture method. The sample for the study comprised of one hundred and seven (107) SS2 students from two intact classes. Purposive sampling technique was used to select two senior secondary schools; and grouped into experimental and control groups. Two instruments – English Performance Test (EPT) and English Retention Test (ERT) with 25 subjective and essay questions drawn from the two topics (Spelling and Phonetics) with reliability indices of 0.82 and 0.72 respectively were developed and used for data collection. The data obtained were analyzed using mean statistics and standard deviation to answer the research questions while the hypotheses were tested using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) at 0.05 level of significance. The result obtained revealed amongst others that students taught English Language using innovative instructional strategy performed better than students taught using the traditional lecture methods. Also, there is significant difference between the performance of students taught English Language using innovative instructional strategy and those taught using the traditional lecture method. The study recommended that teachers embrace a variety of teaching methods in the teaching of English Language like the peer instructional strategy as it will help students to perform better in English Language concepts.