The Relative Effects of Activity and Direct Teaching Adjuncts on Primary School Pupils’ Learning Outcomes in English Language

Abstract

Early Childhood Education in Nigeria has not only witnessed population explosion today but has also gained much popularity among the elite. Children at this stage of development of reasoning and formation of concepts (0-8 years), require the use of varieties of instructional strategies to develop competence and performance skills. Instructional strategies in Early Childhood Education involve the use of different teaching approaches, tactics, methods, devices, designs, actions, efforts, skills and wisdom that can motivate the learner to learn better. Teachers’ persistence in the use of traditional lecture or teacher talk in Nigerian schools, has led to learner underachievement in both oral and written work probably because teacher talk does not involve the learners sufficiently in learning situations.  This paper focused on child-centered instructional strategy of active modeling. The strategy is used with the consideration of the child’s age, interest and participation during the lesson. The traditional strategy of teacher talk was combined with teacher modeling as an adjunct. The control class employed the teacher talk and black board illustration, as obtains in the regular Nigerian classroom. The treatment which lasted six weeks was implemented by qualified university graduates in education.  The results of the study show that the active modeling class achieved significantly higher English language mean score than both the teacher  adjunct and the direct instructional approach {F_{(2, 71)}= 4.841; P < .05}. There was no significant difference in the achievement of pupils under teacher modeling adjunct and the direct teaching instructional strategies. It was recommended that the period of teacher training be extended by at least one year to enable the trainees acquire depth in their subject content areas as well as acquire greater competence in modern instructional strategies.

Keywords: Learner-centered, instructional strategy, modeling, Early Childhood, primary school, Adjunct.