Gender-Stratified and Interaction Effects of Teaching Method on Senior Secondary Students' Acquisition of Communicating Skills in Biology

This study tested whether the ABI > GI > TM effectiveness ordering reported for a pooled sample of 127 senior secondary Biology students (Idiaghe & Odafe, 2026a) replicates for male and female students separately, and whether teaching method and gender interact on posttest communicating-skills scores. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design was used with students in Egor Local Government Area, Edo State, Nigeria, taught animal nutrition using Argument-Based Inquiry (ABI), Guided Inquiry (GI), or the Traditional Method (TM). Communicating skills were measured with the Science Written Communicating Skills Acquisition Test (SWCSAT, α = 0.74). Among 59 male students, ANCOVA showed a significant method effect, F(2, 55) = 434.98, p < .001. Among 68 female students, ANOVA showed a significant method effect, F(2, 65) = 169.02, p < .001, with Tukey tests confirming all pairwise differences (ABI > GI > TM, p < .001). A two-way ANOVA on the full sample showed significant main effects of method (η²p = .89) and gender (η²p = .05), but a small, non-significant interaction, F(2, 121) = 2.57, p = .081, η²p = .04. Given unbalanced cells (13-28 per group), this null interaction is read as absence of evidence, not evidence of absence.