ABSTRACT: This study investigates Instructional Materials and Teaching Effectiveness of Business Studies in Secondary Schools in Oruk Anam Local Government Area. The study population comprised all the Business studies teachers in all the secondary schools in the study area. Two research questions and two research hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The sample size for the study was twenty-eight (28) Business studies teachers in all the fourteen secondary schools in the study area. The instrument used in collecting the needed data for the study was researcher’s made questionnaire called Use of Instructional Materials and Teaching Effectiveness Questionnaire (UIMTEQ).
Simple random sampling technique was employed to select the respondents. The method used in analysing the data collated was simple percentage statistical method. The result of the findings revealed that there is significance influence of visual materials and audio materials in the teaching of Business studies in secondary schools in Oruk Anam Local Government Area. Based on the result of the findings, it was recommended among others that teachers should use visual and audio materials in the teaching and learning of Business studies as this will help to arouse students’ interest towards the learning of Business studies in secondary schools.
Instructional Materials and Teaching Effectiveness of Business Studies in Secondary Schools
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the study
Instructional materials are crucial to teaching and learning processes. A dedicated classroom teacher feels satisfied when he realizes the objectives he has set out to achieve for every lesson. In order to achieve this, a trained teacher employs a number of methods, design and actions, one of which includes the use of instructional material. Instructional materials are referred to as the resources which both the teacher and students used for the purpose of effective teaching and learning.
Okwo (2010) defined instructional materials as those materials that teachers can use in teaching to facilitate the learning of a particular subject or lesson. The lists of instructional materials are inexhaustible and their limit is the teachers’ level of resourcefulness, creativity and imagination. Rominse Owski (2009) listed instructional materials to include newspaper, magazines, pictures, textbooks, chalkboard, laboratory equipment, posters, bulletins, journal, radio, television, audio cassettes, tapes, film scripts and slide others are overhead and opaque, projector real objects and computer.
Visual materials can be developed to accompany the textbook or to represent whole units in themselves students can take part in developing materials. They can be asked to bring to the class magazines, empty cans, food stuffs, video films, folk tales or newspaper features. Ayogu (2012), stated that the teacher can draw from his own experiences in developing supplementary materials. He can introduce new topics and materials for practical work. He can also draw from his knowledge nutritional problems of student from a particular background. From such knowledge, he can develop his own resource materials for remedying difficulties in nutrition, for instance writing a menu to ensure balance diet.
Other materials may include films, games, cartoons word puzzle, advertisement and all sorts of media, material. According to Esim (2013), such materials offer living examples of or stimuli for the understanding of Business studies concepts in the real world. The third principle is that no one set of material can suit all learning purpose for all time, when materials are improvised to supplement the textbook, they must not be regarded as permanent. The teacher should device a means of adapting instructional materials. He should bear in mind that his own supplementary materials will themselves be in need of constant review and modification (Anaekwe 2014).
Audio materials Ayoga (2012), noted that a resourceful teacher could make recordings of plays, discussions and passages to be read aloud for class work. The teacher could ask students of obtain interesting materials from authentic source such as taped broadcast, speeches, lectures, debates, interviews sketches. Audio appeal to the auditory senses of the learner and stimulate interest to learn, heighten motivation for learning because of their concreteness, foster captivity of thought when words are coupled with explanations and sounds, appeal to students to varied interest and ability and improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
In spite of the importance of the instructional material to the teaching and learning of Business studies in school, it is observe that most students complain of being taught principles that seem to be abstraction in nature. It is on the strength of the above, the researcher deemed it necessary so as to high the role that instructional materials play in teaching of Business studies and also study the problem that are associated with effective utilization of instructional materials in the teaching and learning of Business studies in secondary schools.
One of the major problems facing educational sector in Nigeria is the low level of performance of secondary school students in both local and standardized examinations. It has become great concern for researching educators and all educational stakeholders over years. It was also observed that students usually failed examination owing to improper teaching methods and lack of essential materials for instructional delivery. This study therefore deemed it necessary to look specifically into the contribution of instructional materials utilization to the teaching of Business studies in secondary schools in Oruk Anam Local Government Area Akwa Ibom State.
Instructional Materials and Teaching Effectiveness of Business Studies in Secondary Schools
1.3 Purpose of the study
1.4 Significance of the Study
The study will be of great benefit to many people who will come across it with reference to teachers, school management, the students and the educational system at large in the following ways:
- Provide learners with systematic and scientific basis for worth wide functional and productively learning experience and activities naturally leading from abstract to concrete ideas.
- Bring learners into easy and direct contact with and explorations, of all processes, materials, events, situations, changes in time, speed and space which otherwise would be inaccessible.
- Help the teacher to arrest and sustain attention present facts and information teach concepts and principles, guide thinking and include transfer of learning. They will go a long way to help a teacher remediate any instructional take, situation or unit and introduce as well as help in reviewing instructional programmes.
- Enhance prompt and significant higher achievement in learners’ with the teacher is able to promote the learner’s perception understanding, reinforce and retain the learnt materials.
- The student will be of immense benefit to the government, the ministry of education, and the educational policy makers and administrators.
