Instructional Modes and Manipulative Skills of Pre-Primary School Children in Ibadan, Nigeria

Manipulative skills are needed to equip children with competence in different areas, especially for learning and living.They form a solid foundation for children's comprehensive development in the early years.Activities such as grasping, cutting, producing, designing, building, assembling, and folding, among others, are necessary for children to develop these skills.Evidence revealed that these activities are missing in the pre-primary school classrooms because teachers are not intentional about the development of the skills.Most of the time, the learning strategy adopted for teaching and learning activities does not give room for such activities.Hence, this study investigated the impact of instructional modes, specifically video-assisted and illustration-based strategies, on the development of manipulative skills among preprimary school children in Ibadan South-West Local Government Area.The study selected six public and private pre-primary schools through purposive random sampling.Participants, comprising 61 children, were assigned to experimental (VB and DB) and control groups over six weeks.Two research questions were answered, and seven hypotheses were tested.A pre-test-post-test control group quasi-experimental design was used, and data were analysed with Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA).Results showed a significant effect of treatment on manipulative skills (F(2,48) = 33.71;p<0.05;Partial = 0.58), and a significant main effect of school type (F(1,48) = 4.85; p<0.05;Partial = 0.09)on the acquisition of manipulative skills.The study highlights the effectiveness of innovative instructional modes in enhancing manipulative skills and recommends their adoption in early childhood education settings.