EFFECT OF THE USE OF INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS IN THE TEACHING AND LEARNING OF BIOLOGY IN SELECTED SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
          With the growing awareness of the importance of education to the advancement of the nation socially, politically and technologically, it has becomes clear that the need for a good and scientifically based education cannot be over-emphasized. The nation now realizes the need for the quality of education which will be self-reliant. It is therefore significant to survey the availability and effective use of instructional materials for the teaching and learning of biology.
Since biology is a science of life, it should be offered in all secondary schools not just as a school requirement and pre-requisite for further science study, but as a means of helping individuals to understand himself well and develop good use and functions of his senses as well as manipulative skills development .This is only possible through careful and correct use of instructional materials.
In a biology class, the pupils are at the center of the educational process as classroom activities are directed towards developing their total personality to the fullest. In the biology class, the biology teachers explains, illustrates, asks questions, gives assignments, solve problems, uses teaching aids, hold discussions, summarizes the main points, conduct examination to the students. All these activities are carried out in order to mold ideas, habits and attitudes of the pupils with a view to produce to produce well balanced personality. Of all these activities, more is as centrally important as the one relating to the use of teaching aids/instructional materials/instructional auxiliaries.
Instructional materials are the teaching tools ranging from the elementary improvised devices to highly complex an d sophisticated machines specially designed to help teachers to cope with specific teaching needs  and situations . Adeosun [2003] says some instructional auxiliaries are audio, some are visual and some are audio- visual. Instructional materials and equipment’s can be regarded as hardware or software. These resources are books and other printed materials, graphics , radio, televisions, and other audio- visual materials,  equipment’s models, projection and slide etc.
The use of instructional materials gives rooms for both the teachers and the students to share out of the past experience of the world and apply them in the nearest future or now. The student’s performance can be improvised in schools through the use of instructional materials bit by bit. It also provides common background for all the members of the class for learning new concepts.
Weiss [2007] noted that instructional materials play important roles in education .With the recent trends in educational development, instructional materials would be used largely in Nigeria schools. They serve as tools for teaching if adequately chosen and timely used for transmitting knowledge across to the pupils and will make the teaching more effective and interesting and thereby arrest the attention of pupils. The use of audio–visuals  aids in classroom teaching will balance a deeper  learning and improvement in the student’s  performance than what textbooks explanation s could have achieved .Therefore ,  instructional materials  make teaching  more  effective , explanatory, interesting  and meaningful to pupils  in the classroom. The biology teacher can effectively carry out all the activities if there are adequate instructional materials in terms of quality and quantity.
The investigators  was therefore promoted to undertake the study with a view to throw more light into the  importance of, significance, relevance and  effective use of instructional materials  in biology .This will make effective teaching and learning of science meaningful because of  the nature of biology
Statement of the Problem
In spite of the importance of biology, it has been observed that it is not properly thought in schools because of the inadequate teachers failed to use instructional materials in the teaching of biology. Some schools have no adequate instructional materials needed for the teaching and learning of biology, and even the available ones are not used effectively. Therefore, this study was designed to identify the various instructional materials available for the teaching and learning of biology, and also whether the non-available instructional materials can be improvised.