Effects of Indoor and Outdoor Learning Strategies on Performance and Retention in Biology Concepts among Secondary School Students in Adamawa State, Nigeria

This study investigated comparative effects of indoor and outdoor learning strategies on biology student’s academic performance and retention in senior secondary schools of Adamawa State, Nigeria. Three research questions were raised and three null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance guided the study. The study adopted quasi-experimental design, which involves a pretest-posttest, post-posttest, non-equivalent, control group, design. The population of the study was 48,760 SSII biology students across five education zones of Adamawa State. A sample of 514 SSII biology students from four intact classes were purposively selected for the study. The instruments for data collection were adapted Biology Academic Performance Test (BAPT) which were subjected to face and content validation. The BAPT scores were subjected to K-R 21 to determine the reliability of the instrument. The reliability index of 0.78 was obtained. Data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions, while ANCOVA and Independent sample t – test were used to test the hypotheses. The findings of the study revealed that: there is significant differences in the mean achievement scores of Biology students taught using indoor and outdoor learning strategies, F(1, 191) = 14.314, p < 0.00, there is significant differences in the mean retention scores of Biology students taught using indoor and outdoor learning strategies, F(1, 191) = 8.513, p < 0.00, there is significant gender difference on students’ academic achievement in biology when taught with indoor and outdoor learning strategy. There is a significant difference in the mean retention scores of Biology students using the same learning strategies based on gender F(1, 191) = 0.000, p > 0.05 Based on the findings it was recommended that, School administrators should encourage biology teachers to use teacher-students based activities such as indoor and outdoor learning strategies during teaching and learning of biology content.