Teacher - student interactions and students’ performance in Biology in government aided secondary schools in Bulambuli District, Uganda

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between teacher-student interactions and students' performance in biology in government secondary schools in Bulambuli district. The objectives were to explore the effects of teacher communication, support, and content delivery methods on student performance. Data was collected from 13 biology teachers using an observation checklist and performance of learners was based on end of term one and two results of 256 O-level students. The data were analyzed descriptively in Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM SPSS statistic 22). A point biserial Pearson correlation was used to determine the relationship between teachers’ interaction and students’ performance. In addition, whether the difference is performance is due to the influence of teachers’ communication, support for learning and methods of delivery of biology content in students’, an Ordinary Least Square regression (OLS) was used. It was found that 97.4% of the teachers gave facts and opinions about content or procedure as well as expressing their ideas and asking rhetorical questions. It was also observed that 84.6% of the teachers responded to student-initiated questions. On the other hand, 94.9% of teachers presented factual biology content. It was concluded that there is a positive correlation between teacher’s communication, students’ support and teacher’s methods of delivery of content with students’ performance, however, with significant impact from teacher communication. The study recommended enhancing teacher communication skills, providing better learner support, and using learner-centered teaching methods to improve student performance.