Abstract: The study examined instructional Material Usage and Biology Teaching in Secondary School in Ini Local Government Area. Two hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. A survey research design was adopted for the study. Sample size of nineteen (19) Biology teachers were purposive selected from eight (8) public secondary schools in the study area. A well developed questionnaire tittle “instructional material usage and Biology teaching questionnaire (IMUBTQ)” was used for data collection. Chi-square statistical tool was used for data analysis. The findings of the study revealed that instructional material usage enhance effective teaching of Biology in secondary school.
The study also found inadequate use of instructional materials due to unavailability or insufficiency. Hence, it was recommended that Government should supply or provide adequate instructional material to schools to help in the teaching and learning process. School administrators and curriculum planners should make it compulsory for teachers to use instructional material in the teaching and learning process.
Instructional Material Usage and Biology Teaching In Secondary School
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1Background to the Study
Generally, in the whole world, particularly in Nigeria, education has been considered to be the corner stone for development. The teaching of Biology in Nigeria secondary schools needs to be properly handled. The material used by teachers to teach and drive home the subject point at the primary and secondary level of our educational system is inconvertibly a paramount important issue in practical classroom interaction and successful. Instructional materials are materials which assist teachers to make lessons explicit to learners. Instructional materials are the devices developed or acquired to facilitate teaching and also transmitting knowledge, skill and attitude to the learners within an instructional situation Nwachukwu (2014).
According to Abdullahi, (2015), instructional materials are materials or tools locally made or imported that could make tremendous enhancement of lesson impart if intelligently used. Instructional materials include; visuals, audio, and audio-visuals materials such as pictures, flash-cards, posters, charts, tape recorder, radio, video, television, computers among others. These materials serve as a supplement to the normal process of instruction. (Osafehniti, 2013),points out that concrete or physical object which provides sound, visual or both the sense organ during teaching-learning process.
Teachers should use different instructional materials to motivate the learners to learn more effectively. Cronbac (2015), opined that, the use of instructional materials during teaching and learning process can appeal to the individual’s attention among students by creating interest in order to attain the goal for the learner. He also noted that, the use of instructional materials can facilitate the decision of a person towards learning by taking the right actions. Learning is facilitated when learners make use of their sense organs for seeing, hearing, and touching. (Morenfolia, 2013) pointed out that instructional materials are normally chosen to meet the teaching requirements of an approved curriculum.
Therefore, in the educational development, selection and acquisition of instructional materials in teaching Biology, the relevance of such materials for the contents of the curriculum must be ensured. However, students’ perception of the subject as being particularly oriented needed materials to be used in teaching of Biology in secondary schools. It is against this background that extents to which the usage of instructional materials could advance the teaching of Biology within Ini Local Government Area.
Instructional Material Usage and Biology Teaching In Secondary School
1.2 Statement of the Problem
In Nigeria, often times when the results of public examination are release, these seems to have been mass failure in Biology. The reason for this could be attributed to the fact that there are some topics in Biology that pose serious challenge to the comprehension of the students. As such, there is need for the use of instructional materials to teach the topics. This is because some topics cannot be taught effectively without the use of relevant instructional materials to make the lesson practical.
Knight,(2015) stated that, using the available instructional materials, a student is expected to get the greatest satisfaction in the classroom during teaching. Suddenly, it has been found that most Biology teachers have not been using the available instructional materials and as such, students are the worse heat in both internal and external examinations. It is base on the problems that the researcher’s interest is to fid out the extent to which the instructional materials usage could influence the teaching of Biology in Ini Local Government Area.