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Science EducationESUT · Faculty of Education
Research ArticleOpen AccessSpecial Issue

Improvised Laboratory Materials and Practical Skill Acquisition in Under-Resourced Secondary Schools

Samuel O. Adeyemi1*, Ngozi A. Eze2

  1. 1University of Cape Coast, Ghana
  2. 2Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Enugu, Nigeria

* Corresponding author: Samuel O. Adeyemi

Abstract

Chronic equipment shortages limit practical science across much of sub-Saharan Africa. This study evaluated a structured improvisation programme in which teachers built laboratory apparatus from locally available materials. Across twelve schools, students in improvisation classrooms demonstrated practical skill gains statistically indistinguishable from those in fully equipped comparison schools, at a fraction of the cost. The study argues that improvisation should be treated as a legitimate pedagogical competence rather than a stopgap.

Keywords

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Publication history

Received
12 January 2025
Revised
8 March 2025
Accepted
20 April 2025
Published
15 June 2025

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Copyright & licence. © 2025 the author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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