Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to utilise clothing as a strategy for teaching nursery school children in Lagos state. Six research questions were answered and two hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance. The area of the study was Lagos state. The study utilized two different designs namely: the survey and Quasi experimental design involving the pre-test and post-test treatment. The population was made up of all nursery school children of Government and private schools in Lagos state and their teachers. Stratified random sampling technique was utilised to select the Local Government Area, schools, teachers and children that were involved in the study. The selected Local Government Areas (LGAs) for the survey and experimental studies were Kosofe, Somolu, Oshodi-Isolo, Badagry and Epe. However, the LGAs that participated in the experimental section were Kosofe and Somolu under the Lagos state Education District two. The total number of schools utilised were six. The sample for the study was made up of three groups, two hundred and fifty teachers were utilised to answer research questions for the survey section of the study. The second group of respondents were sixteen teachers while the third group were 384 nursery school children who participated in the Quasi experimental section. To establish the reliability coefficient of the questionnaire used to collect data for the survey section of the study, the Cronbarch Alpha coefficient was utilised which was 0.9. Also the clothing lesson plans were trial tested on 20 randomly selected pupils in one of the schools that did not form part of the study. The test-retest method and Pearson product moment correlation was used to establish the reliability of the instruments. The reliability coefficient was 0.83. The performance of the groups on the achievement test was compared. A questionnaire was used to collect data from the teachers. Conventional and clothing lesson plans in the five mathematics concepts as well as achievement tests on the different concepts were used for data collection for the experimental studies. The mean, standard deviation and ANOVA were used for data analysis. The findings of the study revealed among others that twelve subjects could be taught nursery school children using clothing. Thirty concepts in Mathematics could be taught using clothing. Methods of teaching mathematics concepts using clothing were identified. The experimental group of nursery school children taught the mathematics concepts utilising clothing performed better than the controlled group taught using the conventional method. Twenty eight problems that could militate against the teaching of the selected concepts in mathematics using clothing were identified. Twenty one ways were identified for solving the problems militating against the teaching of mathematics concepts using clothing. Based on the findings, it was recommended that: clothing should be included in all instructional materials for teaching all the subjects taught in nursery schools. Clothing should be most utilised in nursery schools to teach all the mathematics concepts in this study. The clothing lesson plans used in this study should be incorporated into the curriculum of nursery schools.
