Teachers’ and students’ awareness in communicating science through outdoor activities in Tanzanian rural community secondary schools

Despite the world's efforts towards promoting science and technology in every sphere of human life, attitudes among students of science subjects in schools are declining progressively. Science subjects in schools are inadequately communicated, and consequently, most students lack interest in studying and opting for science as a field of specialisation for a career. This poses new challenges for teachers, curriculum developers and policymakers in finding the best way to communicate science in schools and develop students' interest in learning sciences. This qualitative study explores teacher and student awareness of outdoor science activities (OSAs) in communicating science in three science subjects: physics, chemistry, and biology. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were used as data collection methods. The study revealed that teachers and students had positive perceptions of outdoor science activities and were aware that outdoor science activities promote deep and collaborative learning, motivate students to learn science subjects, enhance the retention of information for a long time, and complement indoor science learning activities. With respect to challenges, the study revealed that teachers lacked pedagogical skills in teaching sciences through outdoor science activities, limited time to plan for outdoor science activities, and widespread negative perceptions among stakeholders towards outdoor science activities. On the basis of the findings of this study, pre-service and in-service teachers should receive the necessary training to teach students through outdoor science activities and hold positive attitudes towards outdoor science activities. Likewise, deliberate efforts should be made to increase awareness among stakeholders, such as parents and teachers, who value outdoor science activities to facilitate science communication in secondary schools.