ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to investigate biology teachers’ awareness and utilization of innovative teaching strategies in Oyo South Senatorial District, Nigeria. The study found out the effects of the teachers’ variables such as qualification, teaching experience and gender on their utilization of selected twenty five (25) innovative teaching strategies. A sample of three hundred (300) Biology teachers was purposively and randomly selected for the study.
The study was a descriptive research of the survey type, the instrument used to gather the data for analyses was a researcher designed questionnaire known as the Innovative Teaching Strategies Questionnaire (ITSQ). The instrument was validated for data collection by three experts from the Department of Science Education, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria. The reliability was determined by test-retest method using Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient and a reliability index of 0.71 was obtained. Mean and Spearman Rho Rank Order Statistics were used to answer the research questions while the hypotheses were tested using t-test and ANOVA all at 0.05 level of significance.
The findings revealed that the biology teachers in Oyo South Senatorial District were highly aware of the selected innovative teaching strategies with the percentage of awareness being 88.0%. The level of utilization of the strategies was high as 88.0% of the strategies were highly utilized. The utilization of the innovative teaching strategies significantly differed on the basis of teachers’ qualification (fcal= 7.108, p
908, p> 0.05)
Based on these findings, it was recommended among others that workshops, seminars and symposia should be organized for in-service science teachers on the awareness of the innovative teaching strategies with low level of awareness as each of the strategies have specific areas where effective and that inservice training should be organized for teachers on the ways they can effectively put the innovative teaching strategies to use. Qualified teachers should also be posted to schools as they are discovered to be less in number (111) compared to the number of unqualified teachers (189) to give room for effective utilization of these strategies. Teacher training institutions should include the least and non-utilized strategies found in this study – specifically CAI, Minimalism, Socratic Method, Mind Maps, Project Based, Acronym Memory, Vee Mapping, Constructivism, Field Trip, Checklist, and Analogy into their curricular packages and make deliberate efforts to get the biology teachers acquitted with the use of each of the strategies effectively.