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The role of resources in teaching and learning process in schools cannot be emphasized. As a developing country, Nigeria is striving to improve its education system for the knowledge era. Resource utilization, curriculum innovation and professional development courses are integral to improve educational practices as they empower teachers with knowledge and skills required for integrating education and society. Such moves and actions need to be guided with research. The education practices in Nigeria need to be sound and grounded. This paper is concerned with the importance of the use of resources for effective understanding of school science with special reference to biology. It identified necessary resources, constraints and how to select and use resources for effective teaching and learning of biology. The selection and utilization of any resources depends on the specific features of a particular topic. Therefore, different sets of resources and strategies are needed to teach different topics.
Keywords: Science, Curriculum, Resources, Utilization, Teaching, Learning, Nigeria
In spite of the importance of science in national development, students' performance in science subjects is not encouraging. West African Examination Council (WAEC,2010) revealed that achievement of students in biology, chemistry and physics in May/ June examinations has been on the decline. Of the total number of students who sat for the examination in the year under review, the total percentage of candidates who attained credit level (grade 1-6) and above in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics averaged 26%, 34.92% and 22.61% while 53.13%, 43.79% and 45.49% respectively failed.
Biology as a curriculum subject, had witnessed a high level enrolment than any other science subjects in the final year external examinations (James and Awodi, 1997).Conversely, there has not been a corresponding increase in students' performance in the examinations. The poor performance of students in biology has been attributed to poor teaching methods in the form of excessive talking, coping of notes and rote learning of text book materials adopted by science teachers (Opara,2014A)..
These students are exposed to expository than inquiry methods of biology which does not predispose students to experimentation (Anulobi, 2009, Opara and Ejifugha,2014). The National Policy on Education (NPE, 2004), Stated that the aim of education is to inculcate in the child, the spirit of inquiry and creativity through the exploration of...