International Journal of Advanced Scientific Research

Authors
Christiana Fwenji Zumyil, Toma Maina Antip

Abstract
The study investigated the effect of Field Trip and conventional Lecture instructional strategies on students’ achievement and Interest in ecology in Plateau Central Education zone. The study was guided by four research questions while four research hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted the quasi experimental design specifically the pre-test, post-test non-equivalent control group. The population of the study consisted of all the 5,207 SS1 students in all the government owned secondary schools in the study area for the 2021/2022 academic session. The sample consists of 106 respondents selected through simple random, the sample was assigned to one experimental group and one control group. Data collected were analysed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses. Data were collected using Ecology Achievement Test (E.A.T.) and Ecology Interest Inventory (E.I.I.). The result of the study indicated significant effect of field trip strategy over the conventional lecture strategy (P = 0.1.12˂ 0.05) in Ecology Achievement Test (EAT). Further findings of the study showed that there was a significant effect on the interest rating scores of students exposed to field trip over the conventional lecture strategy (P =20.63 ˂ 0.00) in EII. Based on the findings, it was recommended amongst others that Biology Teachers should adopt the field trip to teach ecology to arouse students’ interest and improve achievement across location. School authorities should endeavour to provide adequate learning environment for effective study of ecology.