The Impact of Field Trip on the Retention and Academic Performance in Ecology, Among Secondary School Students in Zaria Local Government Area, Kaduna State

Abstract

 Mahmud*, Ismail Muhammad and Sadiya Ibrahim

The study investigated “the impact of field trips on retention and academic performance in ecology among secondary school students in Zaria Local Government Area, Kaduna State, Nigeria. A Quasi experimental design which utilized a pre-test control group design was adopted. The population of the study consisted of 2834 SSI students from (19) public secondary schools in Zaria Educational Zone of Kaduna State. Four (4) out of nineteen schools were randomly selected from both urban and rural areas where two schools each were used as experimental and control groups respectively. The experimental group was taught, using a field trip teaching strategy while the control group was taught by lecture method. A stratified random sampling technique was employed to select the sample from the four schools and a total of 200 students were selected as a sample size from both urban and rural areas. The instruments used for this study were the Ecology Performance Test (EPT) with a reliability value 0.83 and the Ecology Retention Test (ERT) with reliability value 0.83 aimed at determining the performance and retention of the students. One research question was stated what is the impact of field trip teaching strategy on students academic performance in ecology concept in Zaria Educational Zone? One corresponding hypotheses such as the one that addressed the absence of a significant difference between the mean scores of the students taught in items of an ecology concept (using field trip and those taught using the lecture method) was formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. After the data were collected; the research questions were tested using descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation while the hypotheses were tested using inferential statistics i.e. independent sample test (t-test). The findings of the study showed that the field-trip teaching strategy favoured the experimental group in the ecology concept. The study further confirmed that the field trip teaching strategy favoured the urban experimental group, one of the major recommendations made is the government should make the use of the field trip teaching strategy compulsory made is that government should make the use of field trip teaching strategy compulsory particularly in the teaching and learning of ecology concepts at senior secondary school level.