Abstract:

The need to improve teaching and learning qualities in rural learning ecologies is currently at the fore of educational innovations in different nations of the world. Teachers in rural schools must be equipped with dynamic teaching strategies to close urban-rural educational gaps due to the educational demands of the twenty-first century. Most research at evolving twenty-first century compliant teaching strategies are focused on learners in urban learning ecologies. There has been paucity of research on the impacts of dynamic teaching stratgies on learners in rural schools, in this paper we evaluated the effects of action learning, concept-mapping, and value clarification teaching strategies on students’ attitude to Information and Communication Technology Concepts in Social Studies and Civic Education and also determined the nuisance effects of academic ability and gender on students’ attitude to ICT Concepts in Social Studies and Civic Education.

Quasi experimental design of pretest-posttest control group type with 4x 2 x 3 factorial matrix was used to determine the effects of the teaching strategies on students’ attitude to ICT concepts. One hundred and seventy students in eight rural secondary schools in Nigeria participated in the study for ten weeks. The 170 students were randomly distributed to experimental and controls groups. Seven research instruments used were: Action Learning Teaching Guide, Concept-Mapping Teaching Guide, Value Clarification Teaching Guide, Conventional Lecture Guide Students’ Attitude to ICT Concepts in Rural Learning Ecologies (r=0.76), Academic Ability Test (r=0.72), and Research Assistants Evaluation Sheet. Three hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance while the data got from the experimental and control activities were subjected to Analysis of Covariance, and Estimated Marginal Mean Analysis.

Results indicated that there is a significant main effect of treatment on students’ attitude to ICT Concepts in Social Studies and Civic Education in rural learning ecologies (F (3;147) = 17.669, p < 0.05). Learners taught with value clarification teaching strategy had a higher adjusted attitude mean score (66.243), than those learners taught with conventional lecture method (60.528), action learning (51.94), and concept-mapping (35.13). Gender had a significant effect on students’ attitude to ICT concepts in Social Studies and Civic Education in rural learning ecologies. Academic ability had no significant effect on students’ attitude to ICT concepts in Social Studies and Civic Education in rural learning ecologies.

The findings of this study attested to the benefits of using value clarification strategy over conventional lecture method to teach learners ICT Concepts in rural learning ecologies. The value clarification strategy is, therefore, recommended to teachers in rural learning ecologies.

Keywords:

Action Learning Strategy, Concept-Mapping Strategy, Value Clarification Strategy, Students', Attitude to ICT Concepts, Social Studies, Civic Education.