Assessment of Availability and Utilization of Hands-On Activities in Stem Education among Lower Basic Teachers in Ilorin Metropolis, Nigeria

The study was carried out in order to explore the availability and teachers’ utilization of hands-on activities in STEM education among lower basic pupils Ilorin metropolis. The research design adopted for this study was descriptive survey research design. The population of the study consists of all the lower basic teachers in Ilorin, Kwara State while a sample of 300 teachers was selected for the study using simple random sampling technique. A self-constructed questionnaire titled: “Questionnaire on Availability and Teachers’ Utilization of Hands-on Activities in STEM Education (QATUHASTEME)” was used for data collection. The instrument was content validated by two experts while Cronbach Alpha reliability estimate yielded 0.83. The data collected were analysed using mean and standard deviation to provide answer to the research questions. The findings of the study revealed that hands-on activities in STEM education are available and moderately utilized by the teachers in teaching lower basic pupils in Ilorin Metropolis. It was concluded that these hands-on activities are good for learning STEM education concepts when they are available and highly utilized by the teachers. It was recommended among others that frequent supervision and monitoring should be encouraged in order to ensure that hand-on activities are made available and that teachers appropriately utilize hands-on activities in STEM education in lower basic schools. Keywords: Hand-on activities, STEM education, Lower basic education, Teachers’ utilization