An Examination of the Extent to which School Outdoor Activities could Enhance Senior Secondary Two Students’ Achievement in Ecology

This study examined the extent to which school outdoor activities could enhance senior secondary (SS) two students' achievement in ecology. Non randomized pre test post test control group Quasi-experimental design was adopted. A sample of 160 SS II students from 4 co- educational schools in Jalingo metropolis, Taraba State Nigeria was used. A 40 item instrument called Ecology Achievement Test (EAT) developed by the researchers with reliability co-efficient of 0.95 using Kunder- Richardson formula 21 was used for data collection. The schools were grouped into 2; the experimental group was taught using school outdoor activities while the control group was taught using lecture method. Intact classes were used in all the schools. Students were pre tested, treated for 6 weeks and Post tested. Data collected were analysed using mean, standard deviation to answer the research questions while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result shows that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean achievement scores of students taught using outdoor activities and those taught using lecture method. There was no statistically significant difference between the mean achievement scores of boys and girls exposed to school outdoor activities. Similarly, there was no statistically significant interaction effect of method of teaching and students gender on their achievement in ecology. . It was recommended among others that teachers should use school outdoor activities strategy in teaching ecological concepts in biology and seminars, workshop, conferences, in-service trainings, annual teachers vacation courses and refresher courses should be organized to train them.