ABSTRACT
The study determined the effect of the guided-discovery method on students’ academic achievement, interest and retention in financial accounting in Colleges of Education in North West, Nigeria. The study adopted quasi-experimental research design. The population for the study comprised 667 NCE I students offering financial accounting in nine Colleges of Education in North West, Nigeria. Random sampling technique was used to select Federal College of Education, Kano and Kaduna State College of Education, Gidan-Waya, Kafanchan. 80 financial accounting students from KSCOE, Gidan-waya and 60 financial accounting students in FCE Kano were used. The criteria for selecting the two Colleges of Education was based on colleges of education with approved financial accounting programme with final account of small scale enterprise, qualified financial accounting lecturers, and approved required facilities. The instrument for data collection was a 45-item multiple choice Financial Accounting Achievement Test (FAAT) and Financial Accounting Interest Inventory Scale (FAIIS). The instruments were subjected to face and content validation by three experts. The reliability of the instrument was determined using K-R-20 and Cronbach Alpha coefficient formula which yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.98 and 0.91 respectively after administering the instrument on Federal College of Education Zaria. Before the commencement of the experiment, all students in experimental and control groups were subjected to pre-test in order to obtain the pre-test scores for the study. On completion of the experiment, the post-test was administered with the post post-test scores collected two weeks after the post-test. The data collected were analyzed using mean to answer the research questions while ANCOVA statistic were used for testing the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Based on the analysed data and the interpretation, the study found that guideddiscovery method significantly increased students’ academic achievement, interest and knowledge retention in trading accounting, profit and loss account and balance sheet of small scale enterprises. There was a significant difference in the mean achievement scores of students taught with guided-discovery method and those taught with conventional method. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended, among others, that seminars, workshops and conferences should be organized by educational administrators and the ministry of education where colleges of education lecturers will be trained on the application of guided-discovery method for effective teaching and learning of financial accounting. Lastly it was further recommended that colleges of education lecturers should be encouraged and sponsored for inservice training for skills update in the use of modern and students-centred methods of instruction such as guided-discovery.