Edutainment Boosts Genetics Learning for Future Science Teachers in Nigeria

What happens when you fuse entertainment with education and hand it to the next generation of biology teachers? A new quasi-experimental study from North-Central Nigeria suggests the answer is a dramatic leap in both scientific literacy and higher-order thinking skills. Published in Discover Education, the research by Halima Ndatsu Usman and colleagues at the Federal University of Technology, Minna, tested a purpose-built edutainment package against conventional lecture-based teaching among 372 pre-service biology teachers, and the results were striking enough to prompt calls for a national rethink of how genetics is taught in teacher training colleges.

Edutainment, as the authors define it, is the deliberate weaving together of education and entertainment so that no clear dividing line remains between the two. It encompasses games, interactive media, storytelling, and video content designed to make learning genuinely enjoyable while still delivering rigorous academic material. The concept has gained traction globally as educators grapple with a stubborn problem: abstract scientific concepts, particularly in genetics, resist traditional chalk-and-talk instruction. When students cannot visualise how genes operate at the molecular level or how heritable information passes across generations, comprehension stalls, and with it the capacity to reason critically about the science.

The stakes in Nigeria are far from abstract. Examination records from Colleges of Education across North-Central Nigeria between 2018 and 2024 revealed deeply unsatisfactory performance in genetics: only 5.90 percent of pre-service biology teachers earned an A grade, while more than half received grades of D, E, or F. The researchers attribute this pattern largely to the conventional teaching methods used by most lecturers, which they describe as abstract in nature and poorly suited to a topic as conceptually demanding as heredity. Because these students are themselves future teachers, weak genetics understanding threatens to propagate through the education system, generation after generation.

To test whether entertainment-infused multimedia could break that cycle, the team adopted a pre-test, post-test, non-randomised, non-equivalent control group quasi-experimental design. The study population comprised 11,546 pre-service teachers offering biology in Colleges of Education across North-Central Nigeria, from which 372 NCE III students were drawn using a multi-stage sampling technique. Four colleges were randomly selected across clusters spanning Niger, Nasarawa, Kogi, and Kwara states, with two assigned to the experimental group and two to the control group. The experimental group received genetics instruction through the edutainment package, while the control group continued with conventional strategies.

The edutainment package itself was developed using the ADDIE model, a systematic instructional design framework, and delivered to students’ phones and computers via the file-sharing application Xender after participants installed a video player. Measurement instruments were equally carefully constructed. The biology higher-order thinking ability test contained 45 items across three sections, each with 15 questions targeting analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, the three highest levels of Bloom’s taxonomy of the cognitive domain. A separate scientific literacy ability test contained 15 items. Both instruments were validated by panels of biology lecturers, educational technology specialists, and language experts, and pilot testing at FCT College of Education, Zuba yielded reliability indices of 0.836 for the scientific literacy test and 0.812 for the thinking skills test, figures well above accepted thresholds for research instruments.

The quantitative results were emphatic. Students taught with edutainment raised their mean scientific literacy score from 35.71 at pre-test to 73.72 at post-test, a gain of 38.01 points. Their conventionally taught peers managed only a 6.65-point gain, moving from 33.69 to 40.34. The gap in mean gain between the groups reached 31.36 points in favour of the edutainment group. Analysis of covariance, which statistically controlled for the initial differences between the intact classes, confirmed the effect was significant: F(1,324) = 343.615, p = 0.000, one of the largest effect magnitudes one is likely to encounter in classroom-based education research.

Higher-order thinking skills told a parallel story. The edutainment group climbed from a pre-test mean of 42.90 to a post-test mean of 71.83, a gain of 23.93 points, while the control group rose from 36.28 to 47.58, a gain of just 11.30 points, leaving a 17.63-point advantage for the experimental group. ANCOVA again confirmed statistical significance, F(1,324) = 268.443, p = 0.000. Because the pre-test comparison revealed the two groups began at different entry levels, with t = 7.922 and p = 0.000, the researchers used ANCOVA precisely to neutralise that non-equivalence, strengthening confidence that the treatment, not prior ability, drove the differences.

Perhaps the most socially consequential finding concerned gender. Prior research on gender and thinking skills has been contradictory: some studies found no differences under innovative instruction, others reported male advantages, and still others found female students outperforming in scientific literacy when using PhET simulation-supported materials. In this study, male students in the edutainment group gained 33.74 points in scientific literacy while female students gained 43.24, and in higher-order thinking the gains were 28.43 for males and 29.55 for females. Neither difference was statistically significant, with F(1,193) = 2.898, p = 0.090 for scientific literacy and F(1,193) = 0.121, p = 0.728 for thinking skills. In practical terms, the edutainment package proved gender-friendly: both sexes benefited equally, and the modest pre-test disadvantage that female students carried in scientific literacy was completely erased by the end of the intervention.

The findings align with a growing international literature. Studies in Indonesia have shown that mobile augmented reality-assisted STEM learning, inquiry-based approaches built on local socio-scientific issues, and TPACK-based active learning all significantly improve scientific literacy. Malaysian research has found that edutainment-integrated learning elevated Year Five pupils’ thinking skills, and that university students perceived edutainment as stimulating higher-order thinking in their writing. The Nigerian results extend this evidence base into a new context, teacher education in West Africa, and into one of the most abstract domains in the biology curriculum.

The authors conclude that edutainment is an effective strategy for enhancing both higher-order thinking skills and scientific literacy among pre-service biology teachers, and they recommend that it be integrated into the NCE biology curriculum, particularly for abstract concepts like genetics. They call on the National Commission for Colleges of Education to develop guidelines for edutainment integration and on colleges to train lecturers in developing and implementing such packages, while noting that edutainment should supplement rather than replace conventional teaching. The study has limitations: it focused on a single student population and subject area, and it did not examine how variations in technology quality, accessibility, or interactivity might shape outcomes. Still, the message is clear and timely. When entertainment and science education are merged with careful instructional design, learning becomes not only more effective but genuinely enjoyable, and the teachers of tomorrow may carry that joy into their own classrooms.

Subject of Research: The effect of edutainment-based instruction on higher-order thinking skills and scientific literacy in genetics among pre-service biology teachers in Nigeria

Article Title: Effect of edutainment on pre-service teachers’ higher-order thinking skills and scientific literacy in genetics in North-Central, Nigeria

Article References: Effect of edutainment on pre-service teachers’ higher-order thinking skills and scientific literacy in genetics in North-Central, Nigeria. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02236-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02236-9

Keywords: edutainment, scientific literacy, higher-order thinking skills, genetics education, pre-service teachers, Nigeria, biology education, quasi-experimental study, Bloom's taxonomy, teacher education, educational technology, gender differences