Gender differentials in the Use of Instructional Models in Enhancing Adolescents’ Interest and Achievement in Voter Education Contents of Senior Secondary School Government Curriculum

The study determined gender effect in the efficacy of group investigation and jurisprudential inquiry instructional models in enhancing adolescent students’ interest and achievement in voter education related contents of senior secondary school Government curriculum. The study adopted quasi-experimental non-equivalent pre-test, post-test control group design. Sample for the study consisted of 165 SS II students drawn from senior secondary schools in Nsukka Local Government Area of Enugu state Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select the intact classes from each of the schools that were assigned to the two experimental groups. Data collected using Multiple Choice Government Achievement Test (MCGAT) and Government Interest Inventory (GII) were analyzed using mean and standard deviation for the research questions and ANCOVA for testing the hypothesis at P < 0.05 level of significance. The findings showed that both group investigation and jurisprudential inquiry models were effective in enhancing interest and achievement of male and female students in voter education related contents in senior secondary school Government curriculum. However, group investigation proved more efficacious. These findings were exhaustively discussed with recommendations on how to manage gender factor in using student-centred instructional models in enhancing students’ interest and achievement.


Introduction
The persistent trend of low voter turnout in elections, particularly among youths in Nigeria between 1999 and 2015 has been a major concern in the political development of the country in recent times. The reason could be attributed to poor governance, electoral fraud and political violence (Chukwuemeka, Okoye, Egboh,& Ewuim, 2012;Oni, 2014). This trend replicates in other countries where a significant increase in low turnout among youths has been established by studies (Blais & Rubenson, 2013;Danielle & Danielle, 2011). In retrospect, Resnick and Casale (2011) argued that older African citizens tended to vote more and easily expressed a higher degree of partisanship than their younger population. Several studies have attempted to ascertain the factors affecting youth turnout in elections as patrimonialism, cynicism (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Ideas [IDEA], 2018), parental disposition to politics, peer ideology, lack of political and civic knowledge and lack of interest in formal politics (Journell, 2014;Torney-Purta & Amadeo, 2003;Cohen & Chaffe, 2012). Consequently, low turnout by youths affects the general turnout. As found by IDEA (1999), countries, where there were records of low turnout in their general elections had few youths that participated in those elections why countries that recorded high turnout equally showed high turnout among youths.
Low turnout rate may suggest that citizens are no longer interested in the electoral process. This indeed is worrisome despite the voter education by Electoral bodies and political parties in educating the citizens on the essence of voting in elections, although political parties in Nigeria rarely give enough political education. Thus Ibeanu (2014) remarked that declining turnout at elections could be attributed to inadequate voter education.

Voter Education
Voter education is a programme designed for information and material dissemination to inform voters about the rudiments of the voting process in an election and the entire electoral process (United Nations, 2007;Agyiri, 2012). It emphasizes on the functions of the voters and the impact of each vote on the outcome of the election results. The ultimate aim of voter education is to engage citizens with messages that will help achieve their cooperation in elections, increase voter turnout, reduce the number of invalid votes and ensure adherence to ethical considerations in voting (Jega, 2014). Thus, voter education provides citizens with the basic information required for the exercise of voting rights and expression of their political will. It could be transmitted through televised messages, radio, print media or social media.
In realization of the vital role of voter education to sustainable democracy, the Federal Ministry of Education [FME] in Nigeria (2007) streamlined voter education related contents into school subjects such as Government. As an academic field of study, Government is the study of individual behaviour, groups and organizations in society, especially as regards their relationship with the state power (Obianyo, 2002). The voter education related contents as stipulated in the senior secondary school Government are; election, suffrage, electoral systems, organization of elections and Electoral Commission. These contents are to complement the voter education programme. Buttressing the above, Ibeanu (2014) stated that voter education programme could be more potent when combined with a school programme. This is necessitated by the role of education in inculcating social norms and values in the citizens. Those values such as right voting behaviour, fair play, tolerance among others could be inculcated in the learners through voter education related contents for the development of democratic culture (Dag, Sozel, & Sel, 2015). This position resonates with Kam and Palmer (2008) opinion that the most significant factor affecting students' political disposition is what they learn in school. Similarly, Journell (2011) stated that through interactions in school, students develop political skills and orientations that shape their political life. However, studies (Niemi & Niemi, 2012) have noted with dismay that students' opinion on political participation are suppressed in formal classroom discussions. This trend persists in Nigeria classrooms where teachers do not engage students in interaction that could enhance critical thinking among students (Gilbert, 2014;Nyamwembe, Ondig, & Kiio, 2013). To this end, scholars advocated the need for effective teaching of political contents (Dag, Sozel, & Sel, 2015;Ogujawa & Udoh, 2015;Journell, 2014) using student-centred instructional strategies that are interactive in nature.

Instructional Strategies
Theoretical postulation by Dewey (1938) emphasized the role of education in changing an individual's perception of politics. Dewey advocated that the core teaching is the arrangement of environments within which the students can interact and study how to learn. In line with Dewey's view, some scholars developed instructional models that could enhance students' acquisition of skills for democratic participation (Thelen, 1960;Oliver & Shaver, 1966;Joyce & Weil, 2000). Group investigation model is primarily designed for the development of skills for democratic participation through inter-personal social (group) skills (Joyce & Weil, 2000;Siddiqui, 2013). This type of instruction constitutes four basic features which include investigation, interaction, interpretation and intrinsic motivation, compared with teacher-centred instruction, for internalization and enhanced knowledge (Lazarowitz, Hertz-lazarowitz, Khalil, & Ron, 2013). Group investigation has six steps to be followed during instruction. They are; grouping, planning, investigating, organizing, presentation and evaluation. Grouping involves categorization of questions raised and grouping of students. Planning involves students dividing tasks among themselves and then investigating the issues raised using relevant materials. The next is to organize their different ideas and plan on how to present their findings, followed by a presentation, after which the students evaluate themselves.
Jurisprudential inquiry model as developed by Oliver and Shaver (1966) emphasizes problem-solving approach through the jurisprudential frame of reference. It enhances knowledge connection to the society and develops in students values and attitude through discussions, debates, and arguments over controversial issues for efficient policy making among the citizens (Nwafor, 2014;Damanik, Degeng, Setyosari, & Dasna, 2016;Toyosi & Aminat, 2018). Jurisprudential inquiry model involves the following steps; orientation to the case, identifying the issues, taking positions, exploring the stance, refining the positions and testing factual assumptions. In the first step, the teacher arranges the students in groups after introducing the topic of the lesson, after which the students gather and analyze facts in groups. The students get back together as an intact class to share information among different groups and then prepare to debate on the issue raised. These models have been understudied to test their efficacy in terms of ascertaining the extent their postulations are true (or not) with reference to students' interest and academic achievement in political contents among in-school adolescents.
Ideally, political instruction ought to expose students to politics and current political events in a manner that arouses students' interests and makes politics appear important to them (Journell, 2011). However, there seems to be a decline in the interest of students in the study of Government which could affect their academic achievement especially in voter education related contents which are capable of promoting active political participation among in-school adolescents at the senior secondary school level. Studies have attributed students' disengagement in politics to lack of interest which makes them not to attach value to active political participation (Campbell, 2005;Hibbing &Theiss-Morse, 2002;Lopez, Kirby, & Sagoff ,2005). This suggests that the willingness of the young ones to actively participate in electoral process could be influenced by the method of instruction and proper awareness creation. Niemi and Niemi (2012) observed from their study that student opinions on political participation were frequently suppressed in formal classroom interactions. This may have resulted to a decline in voting among the in-school adolescents of voting age (Martin & Chiodo, 2005;Torney-Purta, Barber, & Wilkenfeld, 2007) be it male or female adolescents.

Gender
In Nigeria, political participation is gender centred as a result of socio-economic factors such as patriarchal system, cultural bias, societal stereotype, violence, financial income among others (Awofeso & Odeyemi, 2014;Akpan, 2015;Luka, 2011). Consequently, Nigeria has been recording low participation of women in both elective and appointive positions. Thus, the 35% affirmative action is yet to be fully implemented. This could have implications for female adolescents studying politically related contents such as voter education. Perhaps, female students could be deterred considering the fact that there is a vast proportion of male to female in politics as may be stipulated in the Government textbooks. Furthermore, it could also make them score lower in their academic achievement than their male counterparts, although there is no consensus agreement on the extent gender influences students' academic achievement.
While studies (such as Dania, 2014;Clifford & Akpochafo, 2015;Owoduni, 2013) found that gender does not influence students' achievement, in contrast, other studies (such as Amedu, 2015; Nnamani & Oyibe, 2016) found a significant effect of gender on students' academic achievement. Further studies found men to have more interest in politics than their women counterparts (Henn, Weinstein, & Forest, 2005). Also, Amoateng, Kalule-Sabiti and Heaton (2014) show that, in general, women are two thirds as likely to turn out as men, with the gender gap in turnout varying extensively across African countries through time. Thus, the crux of this study was to determine the extent students' gender could influence their interest and academic achievement in voter education related contents of senior secondary school Government curriculum as a result of their exposure to group investigation and jurisprudential inquiry models.
To carry out the study, two research questions and two null hypotheses guided the study.

Research Questions
The following research questions were formulated to guide the study 1. What is the influence of gender on the mean interest scores of students taught voter education related contents in senior secondary school Government using group investigation model and jurisprudential inquiry model?
2. What is the influence of gender on the mean achievement scores of students taught voter education related contents in senior secondary school Government using group investigation model and jurisprudential inquiry model?

Hypotheses
Ho 1 : There is no significant difference in the mean interest scores of male and female students in voter education related contents of Senior Secondary School Government using group investigation model and jurisprudential inquiry model.

Ho 2 :
There is no significant difference in the mean achievement scores of male and female students in voter education related contents of Senior Secondary School Government using group investigation model and jurisprudential inquiry model.

Study Design and Study Population
schools in Enugu State, Nigeria that offer voter education related contents in Government. The sample size for this study consisted of 165 SS11 students in four intact classes drawn from four (4) schools in Nsukka LGA out of which 48 are males while 117 are females. Multi-stage sampling technique was used for the sampling. The stages of the sampling were as follows;. Firstly; stratified random sampling was used to select co-educational schools from 30 public secondary schools in Nsukka LGA. Four co-educational secondary schools were drawn from the 23 co-educational public secondary schools through simple random sampling. Secondly, purposive sampling technique was used to select SS11 students. Purposive sampling technique was used because voter education related contents are in SS11 Government scheme of work. Thirdly, one intact class each from the four co-educational public secondary schools from 23 co-educational public secondary schools in Nsukka LGA was drawn randomly, making a total of four intact classes. Two intact classes drawn from two schools received GIM treatment and the other 2 intact classes received JIM treatment. The intact classes were assigned to experimental groups randomly. Thus, 87 students were assigned to Group Investigation while 78 students were assigned to Jurisprudential Inquiry group. There were 27 male and 60 female students in Group Investigation model group while 21 males and 57 females were assigned to Jurisprudential Inquiry group.
Two lesson plans were developed by the researchers for the experiment based on the features of each of the models. Regular teachers of Government conducted the experiment. However, the researchers monitored the experiment for effective implementation of the steps involved in the instructional models.

Instrument for Data Collection
Two instruments developed by the researchers were used for data collection. They were titled Multiple Choice Government Achievement Test (MCGAT) and Government Interest Inventory (GII). MCGAT is a structured 50 multiple choice items with four options A-D. The MCGAT items were generated based on voter education related contents found in the senior secondary school Government curriculum, in which only one option was the correct answer. Specifically, MCGAT items were drawn from topics such as election, suffrage, Electoral system, features of free and fair election and electoral commission. MCGAT was specifically designed to measure students' understanding and academic achievement in Voter education related contents of senior secondary school Government at all levels of the cognitive domain of Bloom's Taxonomy.
The second instrument was a structured interest inventory titled Government Interest Inventory (GII). The instrument (GII) is divided into two main sections namely section A and B. Section A was used to elicit information on students demographic data while section B contained information on students' level of interest in learning voter related issues in senior secondary school Government. The items are on a four point rating scale of Strongly Agree (SA), Agree (A), Disagree (D), Strongly Disagree (SD) with weighting scale of 4, 3, 2, and 1 respectively. To establish the validity of the research instruments, MCGAT and GII were subjected to face and content validation. To determine the reliability of the instruments, MCGAT and GII were administered to students as pre test in a school that was not used for the study. Data obtained through the administration of achievement test were analysed using Kudder-Richardson formular (KR -20) test statistics. The reason for the use of KR-20 was because items of MCGAT were dichotomously scored and were not at the same level of difficulty. Reliability index of 0.79 was established. To determine the temporal stability of the instrument, a test retest was used by re-administering the MCGAT instrument to the same group of students after a period of two weeks of the first administration. The two sets of scores obtained in the two occasions were correlated using Pearson Product Moment and a correlation coefficient of 0.89 was established which shows a high correlation of the two scores.
The reliability index for GII was calculated using Cronbach Alpha. A reliability coefficient of 0.81 was established. Cronbach Alpha was used in calculating the reliability for GII because every item attracts a score and within a scale. The MCGAT and GII had coefficient of 0.89 and 0.81 respectively. The same instruments were re-administered to the students as post test. Data collected were analyzed using SPSS version 20. Mean and standard deviation were used for measures of central tendency while the level of significance of P 0.05 was adopted. A hypothesis was not rejected if the probability value is greater than 0.05 level of significance and vice versa.

Research Question One
What is the influence of gender on mean interest scores of students taught voter education related contents? The results in Table 1 show that the male students taught voter education related contents had the pre-test and post-test mean interest scores of 82.08 and 91.16 with standard deviation of 13.84 and 8.90 respectively. Meanwhile, the female students taught the same content had the pre-test and post-test mean interest scores of 82.38 and 89.19 with standard deviation of 14.53 and 7.87 respectively. However, mean gain scores of 9.08 for male students and 6.21 for female students imply that male students showed greater interest than their female counterparts in voter education related contents.

Research Question Two
What is the influence of gender on the mean achievement scores of students in voter education related contents?  Table 2 indicates the mean achievement scores of male and female students in voter education related contents. The analysis shows that the male students had post-test mean achievement score of 34.83 with a standard deviation of 4.00 while their female counterparts had post-test mean achievement score of 34.05 with a standard deviation of 4.12. However, mean gain scores of 19.00 and 17.77 for the male and female students respectively may have indicated that male students had slightly higher mean achievement score than their female counterparts.
H0 1 : There is no significant difference in the mean interest scores of male and female students in voter education related contents of Government subject. The result in Table 3 shows an F-ratio of 2.017 and a probability value of 0.158 for the difference in the mean interest scores of male and female students in voter education related contents. Since the probability value is higher than 0.05 level of significance, the null hypothesis was not rejected but retained meaning that there is no significant gjhs.ccsenet.org Global Journal of Health Science Vol. 12, No.5; 2020 126 difference in the mean interest scores of male and female students in voter education related contents.

H0 2 :
There is no significant difference in the mean achievement scores of male and female students in voter education related contents of Government subject.  Table 4reveals that the calculated value of F (2.780) for the influence of gender on students' achievement in voter education related contents had an associated probability value of 0.097. Since the probability value of 0.097 is greater than the 0.05 level of significance, the null hypothesis was not rejected but retained meaning that there is no significant difference in the mean achievement score of male and female students in voter education related contents. Hence, it appears that the two models are gender-sensitive and not bias. This implies that the two models are suitable for teaching both male and female students.

Discussion
The findings of this study revealed that male students showed greater interest in voter education related contents than their female counterparts. However, further analysis revealed that there is no significant difference in the mean interest scores of male and female students taught using group investigation model and those taught using jurisprudential inquiry model. The differences in the mean interest scores may have been induced by the fact that women seem not to show interest in politics as much as the men as a result of some associated factors ranging from cultural belief, intimidation among others. These and more factors may have affected the impression of the female students towards voter education related contents which made them not to have much interest in voter education related contents as their male counterparts. However, since the difference is not statistically significant, it suggests that both models captivated both male and female students' interest in voter education related contents of senior secondary school Government.
This implies that if properly taught, both men and women could have the same interest in participating in politics. This, therefore, shows that both group investigation model and jurisprudential inquiry model are effective instructional models that enhance students' interest in voter education related contents regardless of gender. This finding suggests that female adolescents have an interest in studying political contents as their male counterparts.
The implication of this finding shows that women inability to participate actively in politics is not as a result of the gender factor. This finding is in line with the findings of Godpower-Echie and Ihenko (2017), Ajayi, AgamberandAngura (2017), Kehinde and Alebiosu (2006) which found that gender is a determinant of students' interest but statistically not significant.
The findings of the study also indicated that male students scored higher than the female students in voter education related contents when taught using group investigation model and jurisprudential inquiry model, although not statistically significant. This finding suggests that both models enabled the students to corroborate and interact among their groups, which made them had meaningful learning. These findings are in line with the findings of Oche (2012) which no significant difference in mean achievement between boys and girls and Godpower-Echie and Ihenko (2017); Attah and Ita (2017) which found that male students scored higher than their female counterparts. However, the finding is in contrast with the findings of Nnamani and Oyibe (2016) which found that mean achievement score of female secondary school students was higher than the mean achievement scores of male students.

Conclusion
This study was motivated by the incidence of voter apathy particularly among youth despite the voter education contents streamlined in the school curriculum and the inability of teachers to employ student-centred instructional strategies. The ultimate aim was to determine whether the male and female students' interest and achievement in studying voter education related contents of senior secondary school Government curriculum could be enhanced as a result of exposure to group investigation and jurisprudential inquiry models. Findings showed that students' interest and achievement enhanced with male students having slightly higher interest and achievement scores. However, the difference was not statistically significant.
These findings imply that if school subjects such as voter education related contents are taught using effective student-centred instructional strategies, the male and female students are likely to acquire lifelong learning, capable of making them take rational decisions in the society. Secondly, if students are appropriately engaged in voter education contents using student-centred instructional strategies; adolescents are likely to develop interest in participating in the electoral process, thereby minimizing to a great extent the incidence of voter apathy in Nigeria.
The study, therefore, recommends that voter education clubs should be introduced in schools to further intimate adolescents on the need for effective participation in electoral processes. Furthermore, teachers are encouraged to employ student-centred instructional strategies in teaching school contents. This study contributes to the field of electoral participation and instructional strategies. The adolescents being the future adults ought to possess the skills needed to be able to sustain the principles of democracy. They can learn such skills through politically sensitive school contents, using student-centred instructional strategies.  Vol. 12, No.5;2020