EFFECTS OF ACTIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES ON SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ATTITUDE IN GEOGRAPHY MAP READING IN MANGU AREA, PLATEAU STATE, NIGERIA
Abstract
The study examined the effects of active learning strategies on secondary school students’ attitude towards map reading in Mangu Area of Plateau State, Nigeria. Two specific objectives, two research questions and two hypotheses were formulated to guide the conduct of this study. The study adopted the quasi-experimental design particularly, the non-equivalent group pre-test post-test. The sample for the study comprises of 59 students where 31 students are in the experimental group while 28 are from the control. The Attitude Towards Geography Map Reading Questionnaire (AGMRQ) was the instrument used for data collection and was valid and reliable with a reliability index of 0.98. The mean, percentages, student t-test and ANCOVA were used to analyse the data. The results indicated that students had negative attitude towards map reading in the pre-test. While in the post-test, many students from the experimental group have positive attitudes towards map reading compared to their counterpart in the control group which had negative attitudes. The hypothesis result indicated that there is no significant difference between pre-test attitude scores of the experimental and control groups. On the other hand, the post-test indicated that there is a significant difference between students’ attitude towards map reading in favour of the experimental group. It was concluded that students taught with active learning strategies have positive attitudes towards map reading. Therefore, active learning strategies are effective for teaching map reading in secondary school. It was recommended that geography teacher are to be encouraged to use active learning strategies for teaching map reading in secondary schools. In addition, seminar, workshops and special trainings should be organised on regular basis to teach, train and create awareness to geography teacher on the effectiveness of active learning strategies for teaching map reading.
