The influence of teaching and learning resources on the integration of the national goals of education

Abstract

Teaching and Learning Resources refer to the materials that the classroom teacher uses to help the learners to acquire and understand knowledge, concepts, skills and attitudes that he/she introduces during his/her lesson. Teaching and learning resources include but are not limited to structural facilities like properly ventilated classrooms, furniture, kitchen, safe clean water, playground, toilets, and play grounds. Teaching and learning resources entail also instructional materials including text books (course books and supplementary books), charts, wall maps, picture books, flash cards, and real objects(realia), to name but a few. The general aim of this study was to examine the influence of the teaching and learning resources on the integration on the national goals of education in Early Childhood Development and Education (ECDE). Since this objective was about the relationship between the teaching/learning resources and the integration of the national goals of education, the researcher used the Spearman’s Correlation Coefficient to determine whether there was a relationship between the teaching and learning resources and the integration of the national goals of education in Early Childhood Development and Education, and the strength of the relationship if it existed. The N=158 including 28 head teachers and 130 preschool teachers. The n=66 including 14 head teachers and 52 preschool teachers. The head teachers were interviewed following the guide with the following questions in the interview guide: What is the influence of the teaching and learning resources on the integration of the national goals of education? The head teachers interviewed indicated that the correlation coefficient between the teaching and learning resources and the integration of the national goals of education rates at 0.85. This shows that there is a very strong positive (relationship) correlation between teaching and learning resources and the integration of the national goals of education. The preschool teachers responded to questions in the questionnaires. (a) The closed questions required the respondents to indicate the extent to which they agreed/disagreed on the statements given on a scale of 5-1. (b) The open ended questions required the respondents to state, on their opinion how teaching and learning resources influenced the integration of the national goals of education in Early Childhood Development and Education. The respondents indicated that the teaching and learning resources’ prevalence presented a very strong positive correlation between the teaching and learning resources and the integration of the national goals of education in Early Childhood Development and Education, which is statistically significant (p<0.05). The study established that teaching and learning resources influence effective implementation of Early Childhood Development and Education programmes in preschools. A unit increase of the teaching and learning resources would lead to an increase in effective Early Childhood Development and Education by a factor of 0.702. This study recommends that Early Childhood Development and Education centers should be provided with the age appropriate, relevant, and adequate teaching and learning resources. These resources will go a long way in enhancing effective curriculum content delivery as they create a conducive learner friendly environment fully equipped with structural and instructional resources that learners can freely, actively, interestingly, variably, and creatively manipulate to generate, create and acquire knowledge, concepts, skills, and attitudes with minimal teacher guidance.