Attitude Of Senior Secondary School Teachers Towards Education Field Trip In Biology
[ILORIN METROPOLIS]

Importance of Fieldtrip
Fieldtrips are important to help bridge the gap between education and hands-on experience. Fieldtrips are a vital requirement of  every educational curriculum. (Sunex, 2013). While there is much that can be learned in the classroom, some things are better taught when students can have hands-on experience.
Whitley (2011), indentified the following importance of fieldtrip:-
(i)    Reinforcement: Fieldtrip can reinforce what a teacher has been instructing in class about a subject and help students understand the topic better.
(ii)    Engagement: Teachers turn trip into mobile classrooms, instructing students to collect data, then quizzing them or assigning a project based on what they learned during the outing.
(iii)    Socialization: Taking students into a new environment gives them the experience of travelling in a group and teaches them to be respectful of the location they visit.
(iv)    Exposure: Students get to visit place to which they have never been before. This can be particularly advantageous to students who are less fortunate and don’t have the opportunity to travel.
(v)    Curiosity: Students who go on fieldtrip find what they want to learn more about the subjects on which the trip focused.
(vi)    Retention: The type of memories that Educational trips create what is called “episodic memories”, helps students retain information for longer periods.
Going on a fieldtrip means more than simply leaving the school grounds. Educational trips should always have a major educational element, but the impact of educational trips can extend much further. The importance of Educational trips includes giving the students the chance to build closer bonds with their classmates, experience new environments and enjoy a day away from the classroom.
New sights: When students and teachers are together outside the classroom, new educational environments and experiences are possible. Students may have the opportunity to observe many things that are not available at school, including exotic wildlife, rare plants and  if the Educational trip is to a planetarium
Bonding: Getting away from the everyday atmosphere of the classroom gives students an opportunity to spend time with each other in a new environment. They may be able to connect on more of a personal level without the structure of the normal school day. Students may be able to spend much of the Educational trip day in small groups, observing, and learning about each other, which makes learning les boring and interesting.