SCIENCE TEACHERS’ USE OF RESOURCES IN TEACHING SCIENCE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Abstract

This study explored the use of instructional resources in secondary schools in the teaching of science by teachers. Instructional resources are an essential aspect in science education since they significantly influence learners' comprehension, involvement, and overall learning experience in various ways. Education experts believe that effective learning takes place when learners engage productively with instructional resources, leading to successful knowledge acquisition, and this serves as a premise to conduct this study. The study employed an interpretivist paradigm and a case study design. The socio-cultural theory was used as a lens for this study. According to the socio-cultural theory, learners construct knowledge from their interaction with their surroundings, providing them with experiences they learn from. Purposive convenience sampling was utilised to select three secondary schools from two regions. One science teacher participated from each school. Heads of Science Departments also participated in the study. Classroom observations, individual semi-structured interviews, document analysis and open-ended questionnaires were used for data collection. The thematic approach and content analysis were used to analyse data. The results show that some teachers do not effectively use resources in their teaching because of limited time, large number of learners, lack or inadequacy of resources and limited pedagogical skills. Hence, recommendations from this study seek to improve the provision and use of resources as well as to strengthen professional staff development on effective pedagogical skills.