ABSTRACT
This study determined the effect of two modes of improvised
instructional materials on secondary school students’ achievement in
Obollo-Afor Education Zone. Five research questions and five hypotheses were
formulated to guide the study. The design was quasi-experimental pre-test –
post test non-randomized, non-equivalent group. The population for the study
comprised all the 3,758 senior secondary two (SS II) students of the 37
co-educational schools in Obollo Afor education zone. The sample consisted of
149 (71 males and 78 females) students drawn randomly from four comparable
schools. Students in two schools, one urban and the other rural were
taught government using teacher-improvised instructional materials while
students from the other two schools were guided in improvising instructional
materials that were used to teach them. A researcher- made Government
Achievement Test (GAT) was the instrument used for the study. The instrument
was tested for reliability yielding a reliability coefficient of 0.65 using the
Kudder Richardson (KR20). Mean, standard deviation and ANCOVA were used to
analyze data. Results of the study showed that there was no significant
difference in the achievement of students exposed to teacher improvised
materials and those exposed to student improvised materials although students
exposed to teacher improvised materials had a slightly higher adjusted mean
score than their counterparts exposed to students improvised materials.
Students’ mean achievement scores did not differ significantly due to gender
although the females had a slightly higher adjusted mean score than their male
counterparts. In addition, students mean achievement scores did not differ
significantly as a result of school location although students in the rural
schools had a slightly higher adjusted mean score than their urban
counterparts. Furthermore, there was no significant interaction effect of mode
of improvisation and gender on students’ mean achievement scores in government,
and there was no significant interaction effect of mode of improvisation and
school location on students’ mean achievement scores in Government. The
educational implication of the findings is that the emphasis placed on teacher
improvisation in curriculum design and implementation is misplaced. Students’
improvisation is also effective. Both teachers and students should engage in
improvisation as a way to facilitate the achievement of educational objectives.
The two modes of improvised instructional materials must be emphasized in the
design and implementation of the curriculum by the ministry of education if the
educational Objectives are to be realised in secondary schools. Government
should, therefore, set up regular programmes for teachers on improvisation.
Moreso, students’ improvisation should always be encouraged. Government should,
through the ministry of Education, strengthen its supervision in schools to
ensure that both urban and rural schools improvise instructional materials.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
The main purpose of learning is to effect change in behaviour of
the learners. This is achieved through effective instructional delivery by the
teacher. The success or otherwise of teaching – learning activities
depends to a large extent, on how well the teacher communicates and to what
extent the teacher is able to involve the learners in activities during and
after instruction (Offorma, 1994). This is because the desired changes in
learning behaviour can only come not merely through teachers’ instructional
activities but also, learners active and meaningful participation. Learners’
participation can be promoted through the use of instructional materials.
Abdullahi cited in Oladejo, Olosunde, Ojebisi & Isola (2011), defined
instructional materials as materials or tools locally made or imported that
could make tremendous enhancement of learning of a lesson if intelligently
used.
Learning has been found to be optimally enhanced by adequate and
appropriate selection and use of instructional materials by the teacher as well
as the learner. Teaching and learning can only be effective when adequate and
suitable instructional materials are used (Afolabi, Adeyanju, Adedapo &
Falade, 2006). It is also believed that instructional materials affect the
attitude, interest and motivation of the learners (Offorma, 1990). It is,
therefore, very essential that teachers are acquainted with the knowledge with
which to select and use learning materials effectively for the attainment of
set goals (Offorma, 1994). Agun (1982) observed that availability of suitable
instructional materials or learning resources, in good supply and rich variety
and range, is essential in education and especially crucial for the achievement
of curriculum objectives. Instructional materials are materials applied during
the course of instruction to facilitate learning. These materials are either
imported or locally made.
There are different types of instructional materials that
teachers can use. These include real objects or representations of real
objects. For example, models, display boards, still pictures, motion pictures,
graphic, arts etc are used as representations of real objects. Depending on how
instructional materials appeal to the senses, they could also be classified
into three, namely: Audio, Visual and Audio – visual materials. Audio
materials are materials that appeal to the sense of hearing while visual
materials are materials that appeal to the sense of sight. Audio-visual materials
are materials that appeal to both the sense of hearing and the sense of sight
at the same time (Nwoji 2002). Different studies (e.g Johnson 2006, Njoku 2000
and Olayiwola 1996) have shown that instructional materials are not readily
available in secondary schools. In view of this, teachers are left with no
other alternative than to source materials from the local environment to design
and produce alternative materials for instruction. This process of producing
alternative materials for instruction is known as improvisation. and the
materials produced in this process are known as improvised materials.
Improvisation is the act of designing and producing
instructional materials from locally available resources by the teacher and or
learners and utilizing such materials to facilitate effective instruction in
the classroom. According to Eniaiyeju (1983), improvisation is the act of using
alternative materials and resources to facilitate instruction wherever there is
lack or shortage of specific first-hand teaching materials. The designing and
production of such instructional materials may be successfully accomplished
through the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the teacher or in co-operation
with the students (Njoku, 2000). Improvisation, therefore, implies using simple
and inexpensive materials which may be sourced locally to produce alternative
instructional materials where first hand instructional materials are lacking.
Njoku (2000) justifying the need for improvisation of
instructional materials observed that the dwindling economic fortunes of the
country makes it imperative that teachers should improvise instructional
materials, using resources available within the local environment. Olayiwola
(1996) observed that the prevailing economic situation of a nation has its own
effects on the provision of educational facilities and instructional materials.
The present economic predicament in Nigeria has resulted in a situation whereby
simple instructional materials have become luxury items in schools. Olayiwola (1996)
added that some resource centres established in states and some universities
for the purpose of producing, procuring and presentation of instructional
materials are going moribund. The effect is that teachers, as well as the
students, have to improvise instructional materials if they are going to attain
the goals of education.
It is observed that teachers do not show serious commitment to
improvisation. Marjiorie and Brown cited in Njoku (2000) noted teachers’ lack
of commitment to improvisation when they warned that teachers should not
use lack of instructional materials as an excuse to resort to poor
teaching. Rather, teachers should ensure quality instruction by improvising the
needed materials from the available local materials for their classroom
instruction. The need for improvisation of instructional materials cannot be
over emphasized. Jekeyinfa (2012) stated that the use of these materials would
make discovered facts glue firmly to the memory of the students. Momoh (1980)
found out that instructional material have significant effect on students’
academic achievement in different school subjects of which Government is one.
Government as a school subject or academic field of study is the
study of agencies, political institutions and dynamics of the state (Anyaele,
2005). Government as a subject looks into the functions and relationship
between the institutions involved in steering the affairs of the state. It
studies international organizations of which the state has membership and the
relationship between the state and other states. At the secondary school level
it is called Government and is taught at the senior secondary school level
(SS1-SS3).At the tertiary school level Government is called Political Science
and is taught under several units. These include public administration,
international relations, political theory, comparative politics, political
thought, local Government and so on. Government equips the students with the
knowledge of the processes of governance of their state and prepares them as
citizens to be able to partake in the affairs of their state. According to the
Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC, 2012), the
main focus of Government as a field of study is to help students understand the
institution of the state and the process of governance so as to be able as
citizens to actively participate in the process of national development and the
political processes of the societies. In addition, Government as a field of
study enables the citizens to understand and be able to defend their
fundamental human rights (Anyaele, 2005). Knowledge of Government equally opens
the eyes of the citizens and enables them to partake in the politics of their
country. This perhaps accounts for the popularity of Government as a subject
among Arts inclined students in Secondary Schools in Enugu State, Nigeria. Yet
performance of students in the subject has not been encouraging.(see Appendix A
page 111).
The various school curricula including that of Government are
reviewed periodically. The NERDC (2012) in its reviewed Government curriculum,
stated that in the last two decades, Nigeria’s socio-political terrain has
undergone landmark changes. At the international level, new organizations have
been formed and old ones have changed their names. Political boundaries, the
NERDC continued, have also had great adjustments and as such if school
curriculum must keep pace with these changes there is urgent need for it to
become responsive. This is because there is a dysfunction between these changes
and the old Government Curriculum. The aim of the periodic review of the
various curricula is for students’ achievement in the various subjects
including Government to be enhanced.
Government as a subject, however, has continued to record poor
performance in spite of the interest of students in the subject. The National
West African Examination Council (WAEC) Chief Examiner’s report (2013) decried
mass failure of students in various school subjects including Government in
both May/June and November/December West African Senior Secondary Certificate
Examination (WASSCE) over the years. Taking the weaknesses of the students in
the various subjects one after the other, it explained that poor performance of
students in Government result from quite a number of factors. These factors
include: poor understanding of the questions, inability to discuss answers
well, illegibility of hand writing, disobedience to basic rubrics among other
reasons. Students of Obollo Afor education zone have been observed to record
poor performance in Government. A close look at the WASSCE summary result of
academic achievement of Students of Obollo Afor education zone will
show an evidence of this poor performance (see Appendix A page
111).
The NERDC (2012) recommended that in addition to the use of
interactive and participatory approaches to make learning active, robust and
interesting, documentaries, video clips, newspapers, materials from National
Museums and Archives must be procured in order to realize the objectives of the
new Government curriculum. However, it is unfortunate that these instructional
materials mentioned are not readily available in many public schools in Enugu
State. The teacher in this situation will be left with no other alternative
than to improvise the materials for classroom instruction in Government.
Offorma((1990) observed that most teachers fail to improvise instructional
materials and also fail to ask the students to do so. The result is always poor
instruction. This is so because positive learning outcomes will ensue if there
are adequate human and material resources and they are effectively utilized
during instruction.
The effect of improvised materials on students’ achievement in
government may have some relationship with factors such as mode of
improvisation, gender of students, and school location. Mode of improvisation
refers to whether these materials are improvised by the teacher or the
students. These two modes of improvisation of instructional materials involved
in the study may influence students’ achievement differently. When they
are improvised by the teacher, it helps the teacher to become more versatile in
knowledge of his lesson and eases the delivery of the lesson. It further
enables the teacher to explore the environment, harness local materials and use
same in the design or production of materials. On the part of the students,
improvisation enables them to engage in the exploration of their environment
and as such brings about discovery learning. Improvisation by the students increases
the rate at which they learn or assimilate facts during lessons (Johnson,
2006). This is because having been involved in the process of improvisation of
materials for use during a particular instruction the students are in a better
position to relate their experience with new knowledge they gain from the
lesson thereby learning faster. Therefore, the mode of improvisation of
instructional materials could affect students’ academic achievement in all
subjects including Government. Gender of the students involved in improvisation
may affect the academic achievement of the students.
Gender is a range of physical, mental and behavioural
characteristics distinguishing masculinity and feminity. According to World
Health Organisation (2003), gender refers to socially constructed roles,
behaviours and activities a particular society considers appropriate for men
and women. The distinct roles may give rise to gender inequality between men
and women which may systematically favour one group. In turn, such inequality
can lead to inequality between men and women in other spheres of life such as
health status and access to medicare. This inequality as a result of gender may
also have some effect on the performance of students in academic tasks. Certain
academic fields for example, mathematics, physical science and engineering are
generally perceived as predominantly men’s fields while such areas like Arts
subjects which include Government and in the sciences, subjects like Biology
are presumably dominated by females. American Association of University Women,
(1992) corroborated this view when it stated that among the core academic
subjects, some are considered typically “male” and others “female”. It noted
that in spite of increased female enrolment in mathematics and science courses,
ideas persist that these subjects are for boys, while the humanities and social
sciences are for girls. The gender of the students, therefore, may influence
students’ academic achievement in government.
Since the education zone is made up of urban and rural schools,
school location is another factor that may influence academic achievement of
students in government. School location refers to the site of the school and
the nature of the environment where the school is built. Based on where a
school is built, Owoeye and Olatunde (2011) classified schools into urban
school or rural school. Urban schools are those schools in areas known to have
more population and more amenities like good roads, pipe borne water, access to
good medicare, more number of schools, high students’ population and good
transportation system than the rural areas. This situation, for example, may
affect the supply of teachers to both urban and rural areas and as such affect
the academic achievement of students. Experience has shown that most
teachers would always want to remain in the urban schools. The result is that
some schools in the rural areas continue to lack teachers in some subject
areas, and this lack of teachers in turn may likely affect teaching and learning
in most subjects including government in secondary schools in Enugu State.
However, students in rural areas engage in more exploration of
the environment than the counterpart in urban areas. This is so because the
rural children are less restricted than the urban children who live in flats
and congested yards. This may affect the improvisation behaviour of the
teachers and students and may in turn affect students’ academic achievement.
Location may, therefore, have relationship with improvisation and with the
academic achievement of students in government.
Parker (2013) and Sule (2013) have shown that improvised
instructional materials enhance students’ learning. Whenever there is shortage
of first hand instructional materials teachers and students are to improvise or
construct alternative materials for use during instruction. Depending on who
improvises-teacher or students-two modes of improvisation of instructional
materials are emphasized in this study. The effects of these two modes of
improvisation of instructional materials need to be examined to determine their
effects on secondary school students’ achievement in Government in Obollo Afor
education zone. It is equally important to determine the influence of gender
and school location as variables on the students’ academic achievement in
Obollo Afor education zone.
Statement of the Problem
With the popularity of Government among arts inclined students
in secondary schools in Obollo Afor education zone, One would expect high
performance of students in the subject area. However, it is surprising to note
that students’ performance in the subject is not encouraging. Available WASSCE
summary result from Obollo Afor education zone shows evidence of poor
performance of students in Government in the zone .
Studies have shown that appropriate selection and use of
instructional materials during instruction enhance students’ learning. Teachers
of Government are expected to ensure proper selection and use of these
instructional materials. However, it has been observed that these instructional
materials are no longer supplied to schools. It becomes imperative that the
instructional materials be improvised. Conventionally, teachers are expected to
improvise instructional materials; but the new thinking is that both teachers
and students are to engage in improvisation of instructional materials.
Therefore, two modes of improvisation- teachers’ mode and students’ mode are
involved in this study. Studies have been done to compare the effect of the use
of teacher-improvised materials and the use of standard materials or use
of no materials during instruction on students’ achievement. However, no study
to the best knowledge of the researcher has examined the effect of the two
modes of improvisation of instructional materials, on secondary
school students’ achievement in government.
Therefore, the problem of the study becomes: what are the
effects of mode of improvisation (teacher and student improvised materials),
gender and school location on secondary school students’ achievement in
Government?
Purpose of the Study
The main purpose of this study is to determine the effect of two
modes of improvisation of instructional materials on students’
achievement in Government in secondary schools in Obollo Afor Education Zone.
Specifically, the study intends to find out the;
1. Effect of
teacher and student improvised materials on the achievement of students in
government.
2. influence
of gender on students’ achievement in government.
3. influence
of school location on the achievement of students in government.
4. interaction
effect of mode of improvisation and gender on students’ achievement in
Government.
5. interaction
effect of mode of improvisation and school location on students achievement in
government.
Significance of Study
This study is anchored on Jerome Bruner’s theory of instruction.
This theory emphasizes exploration of the environment by learners as technique
for teaching and learning and as a key to discovery learning. When students and
teachers are involved in improvisation, they experience discovery learning.
This can be transferred into the classroom to improve achievement of the
students. Therefore, this study provides the opportunity to verify the extent
improvisation by teachers and students improves learning.
The findings of the study could also be of benefit to
researchers, Ministry of Education officials, teachers, students and curriculum
planners. It could furnish researchers with relevant information on the effect
of improvisation of instructional materials on students achievement in
government. If this work is published in magazines or journals researchers can
have access to the findings and make use of it in enriching their research
work. This could be useful should they opt to take up research issues relating
to improvisation of instructional resources.
The findings of this study, when published, could be of help to
the Ministry of Education in planning conferences, workshops and seminars for
capacity building of the teachers and students in improvisation of
instructional materials. This is because findings from this study would
indicate whether teachers or students improvised instructional materials would
be more effective.
The findings of the study could be of immense help to the
teachers and school authorities. The school authorities could based on how
effective the two modes of improvisation are in enhancing learning, which mode
was more effective, mount workshops for teachers and students on improvisation
of instructional materials. Through these workshops, the teachers acquire more
skills in improvisation and experience discovery learning through exploration
of the environment during improvisation.
The findings of this study could also assist curriculum
planners. This is because the findings could guide them in curriculum
development, instructional design, implementation and evaluation. It could
guide them in integrating the improvised materials topic by topic in curriculum
and instructional design.
Textbook authors/publishers are also hopefully going to benefit
from the findings of this study. This is because the publications of the
findings of the study could supply them with relevant information that
would help in enriching their textbooks by integrating the appropriate modes of
improvisation in them.
The findings of the study could also be of immense help to the students
as it would encourage students to develop instructional materials that would
enhance teaching and learning. This would equally encourage students to explore
their own environment thereby gaining more knowledge through discovery. This
boosts students’ learning ability and as such enhances their academic
performance.
Scope of the Study
This comparative study was carried out in Obollo Afor education
Zone of Enugu State, Nigeria. It compared the effect of teacher and student
improvised instructional materials on secondary school students’ achievement in
Government in Obollo Afor education zone of Enugu State, Nigeria. Secondary
variables of interest include: gender, school location, and their interaction
effects with mode of improvisation of instructional materials on learners’
achievement in government in secondary schools in Obollo Afor education zone of
Enugu state, Nigeria. The contents of the lessons are delimited to six (6) SS
II third term topics, namely:
1. pre-colonial
Administration in Yorubaland
2. pre-colonial
Administration in Hausa/Fulani land
3. pre-colonial
Administration in Igboland.
4. British
colonial policy of indirect rule
5. French
colonial policy of Assimilation and Association.
6. Nationalism:
Rise, Growth and Effects.
Experience has shown that students see the third term scheme of
SS 2 as difficult topics. This is probably because the topics are more of
history and less of elements of government they studied in SS 1. The
first six topics were selected in order not to disrupt normal school teaching
sequence. Third term is of 12 to 13 weeks duration. Moreso, mid-term test
normally comes in the middle of each term. The first six weeks were, therefore,
chosen so as not to disrupt the mid-term tests that come between the seventh
and eight weeks of the term.
Research Questions
The following research questions guided the study.
1. What
are the mean achievement scores of students exposed to teacher and student
improvised materials?
2. What is
the influence of gender on mean achievement scores of students in Government?
3. What is
the influence of school location on mean achievement scores of students in
Government?
4. What is
the interaction effect of mode of improvisation and gender of students on the
mean achievement scores of students in Government?
5. What is
the interaction effect of mode of improvisation and location of school on the
mean achievement scores in Government?
Hypotheses
These null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance.
Ho1
There is no significant difference in the mean achievement scores of students
taught with teacher improvised materials and those taught with student-
improvised materials.
Ho2 There
is no significant difference in the mean achievement scores of students in
Government due to gender.
Ho3 There
is no significant difference in the mean achievement scores of students in
Government due to school location.
Ho4 There
is no significant interaction effect of the mode of improvisation and gender on
the mean achievement scores of students in Government.
Ho5 There
is no significant interaction effect of the mode of improvisation and school
location on mean achievement scores of the students in Government.