Improving Secondary School Students’ Attitude towards Geography through Physical and Virtual Laboratories in North Central Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of Physical and Virtual Laboratories on the Attitude of secondary school students' attitude towards learning Geography in North Central Nigeria. The study adopted a quasi-experimental research design. The sample size of the research consisted of 768 students from 12 secondary schools in North Central zone ofNigeria. Four secondary schools from each ofthe three sampled states in the zone were purposively chosen and randomly assigned to research groups: experimental group I (Physical Laboratory), experimental group II (Virtual Laboratory) and control group (Lecture Method). A 20 -- item research instrument titled Questionnaire on Attitude of Students towards Geography (QASG) was used for data collection in this study. Cronbach alpha's formula was employed to ascertain the reliability coefficient of QATG and it yielded 0.70. The data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics of Mean and Standard Deviation and inferential statistics of Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The results of the study revealed that physical and virtual laboratories enhanced secondary school students' attitude towards geography better than lecture method and it was therefore recommended that these laboratories should be embraced as teaching strategies for teaching geography concepts in secondary schools in order to improve students' attitude towards the subject.