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

Teachers Perception Concerning Fieldtrip: The perception of teachers is that when schools organize fieldtrip, they are increasingly choosing to take students on trip to reward them for working hard to improve their performance rather than to provide cultural enrichment. Johnson (2012) in his own submission posited that support from the schools, parents teachers and whatever outside facility or organization involved are factors influencing the effectiveness of fieldtrip.       
According to Oladele (2011), Parent participation factor, rising cost, poor planning and implementation of fieldtrips and negatively influence its desired goals. When parents scheduled are less flexible, many schools find it difficult to obtain enough parent volunteers for fieldtrips. It is unfortunate that so many factors are conspiring to thwart teachers attempt at organizing educational fieldtrips. The benefits to students are obvious, especially those in less affluent areas and many students missed the valuable learning opportunities.
Teachers Attitude to Fieldtrip
Fieldtrip can be considered as one of the three avenues through which biology can be taught. Through formal classroom teaching, practical work and fieldtrip. In Nigeria, teachers tend to use the term excursion rather than fieldtrip.
Duvaal (2011) posited that teachers coordinate trip arranged by the school and undertake for educational purpose, in which students go to places where the materials of instruction can be observed and studied directly in their functional setting. Much of the literature on teacher perceptions toward fieldtrip are anecdotal (Shiley, 2012).
Whitley (2012) reviewed texts and research findings by biology educators and summarized their attitude and perceptions for taking fieldtrips into five, namely:-
(i)    Attributed values
(ii)    Providing first-hand experience
(iii)    Stimulating interest and motivation in biology.
(iv)    Giving meaning to learning and interrelationship
(v)    Observation, perception skills and personal development.
Quantitative studies of teachers attitude toward fieldtrip were undertaken by Falk (2011) who found that in the opinion of teachers, the benefits derived from fieldtrip were hands-on real world experiences, positive attitudes to biology and motivation toward the subject, development of socialization among students and cooperative learning. Negative attitudes of teachers revealed by the research related to teachers skills, disparity between theory and practice and perceive teacher inertia (Butler, 2013). Teachers attitude towards fieldtrip are based on personal outcomes, social support and self efficiency.     
The studies of Awoniyi (2012) revealed that teachers perceived fieldtrip as activities that enhance students understanding of the process involved and equally improve students attitudes towards biology and in the classroom as well. Similar outcome have been described in Bell (2013) who opined that teachers perceived fieldtrip as an effective pedagogy which they want to use more frequently and effectively. Most of the teachers felt that as they had become experienced as teachers, they felt more capable of using a wider range of both formal and informal teaching strategies.
However, Obayan (2013), in his study revealed that there are variations in the attitude and understanding of teachers concerning the usefulness of fieldtrip. Most realized the cognitive outcomes of taking them and many, also saw their affective values. He found that there was a difference    between teacher attitude on the value of fieldtrip and the participant. Teachers perceive fieldtrip as a strategy that reflect in formal teaching method rather than the formal class room methods which are often busy work, and displacing perhaps as a consequence of using practical work as part of their pedagogy, biology teachers preferred using informal method more easily.