RELATIVE EFFECTS OF SELECTED COMMUNICATIONAL STRATEGIES IN SOME BIOLOGY TEXTBOOKS ON HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’LEARNING IN BIOLOGY

Abstract

Textbooks have consistently been accepted as an important companion of science teachers and students,, With apparent inadequacies of laboratory equipment and facilities, coupled with the unwillingness of Science teachers to explore their environment sufficiently, most science teachers had struck faithfully to textbooks as an easily accessible instructional aid in shaping their knowledge in science. Today, textbooks have been seen as a critical component of courses than contact with actual living material. In addition to their roles as an instructional aid, textbooks have for sometime remained as a source of information. In many developing Countries, particularly in Africa and Asia, science has been largely held as a foreign knowledge whose understanding can best be appreciated and understood only by reading textbooks. This great dependence on books places a premium on the value, quality and significance of textbooks in impacting scientific knowledge and understanding. The pertinent and crucial question is, "To what extent should textbooks serve as facilitators of scientific knowledge and learning in terms of effective incorporation of desirable communicational strategies?" This study had attempted an answer to this complex and multi-faceted issue. In seeking an answer, an attempt was made in identifying desirable communicational strategies expected in a biology textbook. Further efforts were also made to find out if four commonly used biology textbooks in Nigeria are indeed within the comprehension level of students. Having identified the various communicational strategies in the four textbooks, the relative effects of selected strategies on secondary school Students’ learning was consequently focussed upon. Form four secondary school students (N = 154) drawn from three (two for experimental, and one for control groups) selected schools in Oyo State, Nigeria were involved in the study. In addition, 50 people (which included teachers, students, education officials, publishers and authors) were involved in a survey relating to desirable communicational strategies in a biology textbook. For the experimental setting, cognitive achievement in biology, the level of development of scientific attitudes and the level of acquisition of practical skills were the dependent variables of the study. The independent variables included the textual communicational strategies, age and sex of the subjects. The Solomon—3 design was used for the data gathering. All the subjects were pretested, treated for six weeks and post- rested on all dependent measures. The result of the study revealed the following: 1. There were significant differences in the number of factual, leading, probing and terminal questions in the four biology textbooks examined. 2. There were significant differences in the number of technical terms defined at; first occurrence, immediately after occurrence, later in the text and those not defined in the four biology textbooks examined. 3. There were significant differences in the number of local and non-local specimens, labelled/ unlabelled diagrams, labelled and unlabelled pictures contained in the four biology textbooks examined. 4. There were significant differences in the number of evolutionary, ecological, economic importance, inquiry, historical and knowledge themes in the four biology textbooks. 5. There was no significant difference in the number of traditional world-view themes represented in the four biology Textbooks. 6. There were significant differences in the number of simple, specific, general and challenging practical exercises contained in the textbooks examined. 7. There were significant differences in the views of authors, teachers, publishers, ministry officials and students in their preferences for questioning styles, specimens, pictures/diagrams, practical exercises, major themes and physical characteristics of biology textbooks. 8. There were significant differences in the cognitive, affective and psychomotor performances of the experimental and control group subjects with respect to questioning styles, technical terms, specimens, pictures/diagrams, major themes and practical exercises. On the basis Of the findings, the following recommendations were made; 1. To promote cognitive effective and psychomotor performances in biology, teachers should identify the merits of communicational strategies in biology textbooks, and make these textbooks available for teachers' and pupils' use. They should also use in planned sequence, identified strategies in their teaching. 2. Authors and publishers should make use of a variety of communicational strategies in the preparation of biology textbooks. They should be conscious of the comprehensibility of the learning material they are presenting. A constant review of published textbooks should be made along identified merits. 3. Ministry officials should involve practioners in the education sector in the selection of textbooks for students’ use. 4. School libraries could be supplemented by the location of community/district libraries for a number of schools that do not have libraries. 5. A regular forum (Seminars, workshops) should be organised for officials, publishers, authors, teachers and students where exchange of ideas on the merits of identified communicational strategies in textbooks can be discussed.