ABSTRACT

This study was carried out to ascertain the results of Socratic method on student‘s art performance in secondary schools, of Benin metropolis Nigeria. The aim is to find out how students perform when exposed to Socratic method, to know if male students will perform better than female students when exposed to the Socratic method, and find out if Socratic method would have any effect on students performance in fine arts in both private and public schools. This is a quasi-experimental design where pre-test and post-test control and experimental group will be used. Forty (40) fine arts students (boys and girls) from four selected secondary schools will be used as the sample size. Simple random sampling will be used to select the students. The instrument used for the study is a self-designed art appreciation test (AAT) consisted of twenty (20) multiple choice items which was administered personally by the researcher for the collection of data. Obtained data was analyzed in frequency and percentage. The major findings obtained revealed that students perform better in fine art when taught using Socratic method compared to the conventional method. Female students perform better in fine art performance when taught using Socratic method. Private schools perform better than public schools when taught using Socratic method. Based on the findings from the study, it was deduced that students perform better in art when taught using Socratic method as compared to conventional method. It was recommended that the teaching of art would be very effective if art teachers start to use innovative teaching techniques such as Socratic method to improve  the cognitive performance of art students.