ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF FIELD TRIP AS A PEDAGOGICAL TOOL ON STUDENTS’ CREATIVE THINKING AND PERFORMANCE IN LEARNING VISUAL ARTS

Abstract

This study explored the relationship between the field trips and the potential benefits of these visits to students’ creativity and practices in art tasks. Three research questions and one hypothesis guided the conduct of the study. The study adopted descriptive research design. Structured questionnaire based on the specific objectives of the study was used to elicit responses from selected Visual Arts teachers and students in selected secondary schools. The study population comprised all Visual Arts teachers and students in 30junior (public and private) secondary schools in Education District VI (This district was divided into 3 zones for administrative convenience which are Ikeja, Mushin and Oshodi/Isolo areas of Lagos State). Stratified sampling technique was adopted in selecting 10 schools in each of the three zones comprising of 5 public and 5 private secondary schools within the zones. Meanwhile, simple random sampling technique was employed to select 1 visual art teacher and 9 visual art students in each of the 30 schools to have a total of 300 respondents for the study. The analysis employed the use of mean score and standard deviation for descriptive statistics. For the inferential analysis, t-text of independent difference was adopted. The cut-off mean for agreement or disagreement was 2.5 such that all mean score of 2.5 and above were remarked as agree while all mean scores below 2.5 were remarked as disagree. The findings showed that field trip motivates the students, stimulates the interest in discovering something more about a particular subject but that lack of financial support from parents and government and lack of school administrator support for field trips are major hindrances to field trip in teaching visual art. It was suggested that field trip as a method of teaching should be made compulsory in the curriculum of visual arts at the secondary school level of education and that adequate planning and preparation should be done by the visual art teachers and the school management so that academic aim of embarking on the field trip can be achieved.