Effects of Bi-Modal Schoolyard Pedagogy and Gender on Social Process Skills of Preschool Children in Oyo State, Nigeria

Preschools give the children the opportunity to develop maximally by exploring the benefits of learning during the early years. For these benefits to be maximised, attention should be given to all skills, including social skills. This reality, coupled with the nature of the preschoolers, necessitates the use of pedagogies that encourage learners’ active participation and interaction with the natural environment. This study investigated the effects of bimodal schoolyard pedagogy and gender on social process skills of preschool children in Oyo State, Nigeria. Three (3) hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. This study adopted the pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental design. The study has a sample size of 113 preschoolers in public schools in Ibadan, Oyo State, while the teachers and research assistants participated in the data collection and instrument administration process. The Social Skills Assessment Rating Scale (SSARS) was used for Data collection. The instrument was rated on 4 4-point Likert Scale. It was validated through experts in the field of early childhood education and related fields of study, with a reliability index of (α = 0.82) using the Cronbach alpha reliability technique. Findings showed no significant main effect of schoolyard pedagogy on social process skills (F (2, 101) = 0.478, P > .05), with the Structured School Yard pedagogy group performing slightly better than the other groups. There was no significant main effect of gender on social process skills, while the interaction effect of treatment and gender was also not significant. It was concluded that Structured Schoolyard Pedagogy could prove helpful in social process skills instruction for the preschoolers. It was recommended among others that teachers, educational administrators, and all stakeholders should therefore work hand in hand to ensure the provision of a good learning environment and explore the potential of the schoolyard as an extension to the classroom.