Abstract
This study was designed to determine the effect of language of instruction on pupils’ academic achievement and interest in Agriculture in primary schools. The study adopted a pretest, posttest, non-equivalent control group, quasi-experimental research design which involved groups of pupils in their intact classes assigned to experimental and control groups. The population for the study was 17,542 primary five pupils in Owerri Education Zone of Imo State out of which 145 pupils were sampled using 2-stage purposive sampling technique and used for the study. Six research questions and eight null hypotheses, tested at 05 level of significance guided the study. The instruments used for data collection were Achievement Test in Agriculture (ATAGRIC) and Agriculture Interest Inventory (AGRICII). To ensure content validity of the ATAGRIC, a table of specification was built for the test. The lesson plans, ATAGRIC, AGRICII and the training manual were subjected to face validation by seven experts. The ATAGRIC was trial tested to determine its psychometric indices and reliability co-efficient. The trial test for determining the coefficient of stability of the ATAGRIC was carried out using test re-test reliability method. Pearson Product Moment Correlation coefficient of the ATAGRIC was found to be 0.81. Cronbach alpha was used to determine the internal consistency of the Agriculture interest inventory items. The reliability coefficient for the AGRICII was found to be 0.82. Data were analyzed using mean to answer the research questions; while ANCOVA was used to test the null hypotheses. The study found out that Igbo language as a medium of instruction is more effective in improving pupils’ academic achievement and interest in Agriculture than English language as medium of instruction in Imo State. The study also found out that Igbo language instruction is effective in improving both rural and urban pupils’ achievement and interest in Agriculture. There was an effect of gender on the pupils’ achievement and interest in Agriculture favouring boys. However, the effect on interest was not found significant. The study found out that there are no significant interaction effects of Igbo language as a medium of instruction and gender on the academic achievement and interest of primary school pupils in Agriculture. This implied that the effectiveness of Igbo language as medium of instruction on pupils’ achievement and interest in Agriculture does not depend on gender. Consequently, it was recommended that Government should review the language policy of the country with a view to incorporating and enforcing the use of language of the environment or mother tongue based instruction at the senior primary school level and the curriculum should be reviewed towards additive bilingualism in schools.