EFFECT/ROLE OF INSTRUCTIONAL AID IN THE ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF STUDENTS IN ECONOMICS IN SOME SELECTED SECONDARY SCHOOLS
The study looked at how instructional aids affected secondary school students’ academic achievement in economics in Kwara State. The study was carried out using a quasi-experimental design. The study’s participants were drawn at random from two public secondary schools.
One hundred twenty-five students were purposefully chosen from the study area’s two randomly selected public secondary schools. The students from the two schools were divided into two groups, one for the experimental and the other for the control.
The researchers taught the students in the experimental group for six weeks using instructional aids. The researchers devised an Economics Achievement Test (EAT) to collect data. The data were examined using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA).
The study found a significant difference in the mean achievement scores of students in the experimental and control groups, as well as a non-significant interaction effect of gender and treatment on the mean achievement scores of the students.
It was therefore recommended that students support teachers’ efforts to provide local instructional aids to enhance learning and promote academic performance in schools, and that teachers always do their best to use available instructional materials to make their lessons more interesting.
Keywords: educational aids, economics, achievement, students, and Kwara State
INTRODUCTION
Economics is one of the subjects available to Nigerian Senior Secondary School students. According to Dwivedi (2004), economics is the study of how society decides what, how, and for whom to produce goods such as steel and strawberries and render services such as message or life concerts that are consumed or enjoyed only at the time they are produced.
He went on to say that depending on the economic system used by a country, the question of what, how, and for whom to produce is answered by either a central planning agency or the price mechanism. A student’s level of understanding of Economics will determine his ability to solve economic problems and make rational decisions about society.
This implies that a student’s ability to apply economic principles will be determined by his or her academic performance in the subject. Over the years, society has shifted the blame for poor student performance in public examinations, particularly in Economics, to teachers’ poor choice of teaching methods.
20 Economic Impacts of Educational Aids on Students… Anatolian Journal of Education, Vol.3, No.2 (October 2018). Other variables that influence the teaching and learning processes include instructional aids, teacher qualifications, school environment variables, student factors, and so on.
The primary focus of this study is instructional aid in order to uncover its effects on student academic performance. It is impossible to overstate the importance of instructional aids in any teaching/learning process. This is due to the fact that such materials improve, facilitate, and make teaching/learning more enjoyable, lively, and concrete.
The devices acquired, developed, or improved to assist or facilitate teachers in communicating organized knowledge, skills, and attitudes to learners during the teaching and learning process are referred to as instructional aids (Nwachukwu, 2006).
According to Mbipom (2000), teachers use instructional aids to help students achieve their goals because the order in which they encounter materials has both direct and indirect effects on their ability to master the material. Providing a more realistic experience of a real-world situation during the instructional process may improve the acquisition and retention of factual information.
In line with this, Umaru (2011) believes that instructional aids will not only provide the necessary concrete experience, but will also aid in the promotion of concept understanding and generalization by making the instructional process practical and realistic. As a result, the impact of instructional materials on improving students’ academic performance is undeniable.
As a result, schools should try to provide necessary learning aids to supplement teachers’ efforts, because teachers alone cannot provide all of the necessary conditions for an effective teaching and learning process. However, different studies have made contradictory claims about the impact of instructional aids on academic achievement.
Egbona (2002) investigated the extent to which instructional materials are made available for the teaching-learning process and discovered that the availability of instructional materials has no significant relationship with student academic performance.
Furthermore, Esu, Enukoha, and Umoren (2004) discovered that teaching aids are critical to effective teaching and learning activities as well as successful instructional delivery in schools. In contrast, Etim (2001) investigated how the availability of instructional materials influences academic performance of students in economics in Calabar municipal.
Etim discovered that the majority of the schools visited lacked instructional materials for teaching economics. The study’s findings indicated that instructional materials have a positive influence on academic performance in favor of schools that have instructional materials.
As beneficial as instructional aids are in instructional processes, it is disheartening that most economics teachers are not well-versed in the selection and use of viable instructional aids, and as a result, economics teaching and learning has not been optimal.
Students’ poor performance in economics is reflected in their overall results in examinations such as the General Certificate of Education (G.C.E.) and the Senior Secondary School Certificate Examinations (S.S.C.E.). Despite the efforts of Economics teachers to improve students’ performance in the subject, it appears that much work remains to be done (Ankomah & Kwarteng, 2010).
Many teaching methods and approaches have been introduced, but they have not improved student achievement in economics. Teachers teach the subject matter in abstraction, making it a comprehensive and difficult task for students, which has worked against the maximization of academic performance.
As a result, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of instructional aids on students’ economic achievement in Kwara State.
The study specifically sought to:
1. determine the differences in achievement mean scores of students in the experimental and control groups; and
2. 2. Determine the interaction effect of gender and treatment on the students’ achievement mean scores.
The following null hypotheses guided the researcher throughout the study to achieve the study’s goal.
1. There is no statistically significant difference in the mean achievement scores of students in the experimental and control groups.
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EFFECT/ROLE OF INSTRUCTIONAL AID IN THE ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF STUDENTS IN ECONOMICS IN SOME SELECTED SECONDARY SCHOOLS
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