Effects of outdoor activities and advance organizer teaching strategies on students’ academic performance in secondary school basic science in Ekiti state

The study investigated the effects of Outdoor Activities and Advance Organizer teaching strategies on students’ academic performance in secondary school Basic Science in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Specifically, the study was designed to ascertain the difference in the performance of students exposed to Outdoor Activities, Advance Organizer and Conventional teaching strategies. The study also investigated the difference in the performance of students exposed to those strategies based on gender. The study adopted non-equivalent pre-test post-test design. The population consisted of 12, 033 Basic Science students in Ekiti State while the sample consisted of 138 J.S.1 students (intact class size) drawn from three public secondary schools in the three Senatorial Districts of Ekiti State. The sample was selected using multistage sampling procedure. The research instrument ‘Basic Science Performance Test (BSPT)’ was used to collect relevant data for this study. The face and content validity of the instrument was ensured while the reliability of the instrument was determined using split-half which yielded reliability co-efficient of 0.7872. The data were analyzed using inferential statistics of t-test, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) and Multiple Classification Analysis (MCA), all at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study showed that the three groups (Outdoor Activities, Advance Organizer and Conventional) were homogenous at the commencement of the experiment. The use of Outdoor Activities and Advance Organizer teaching enhanced performance of students in Basic Science than the Conventional strategy. However, Outdoor Activities and Advance Organizer are not gender biased. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended among others that the use of Outdoor Activities and Advance Organizer teaching strategies should be encouraged in Basic Science class in Junior Secondary Schools so as to enhance academic performance of students in Basic Science. It was also recommended that Basic Science teachers should update their knowledge so as to accommodate the use of Outdoor Activities and Advance Organizer teaching strategies.