ABSTRACT

The study investigated the availability and utilization of instructional media in the teaching and learning of social studies in Abia State. The study adopted descriptive survey research design. A sample of 737 respondents which comprised of 305 teachers and 432 students drawn from 40 upper basic education public secondary schools in Abia State that covered the three Education zones,was used. The sample was arrived at using multi-stage sampling procedure. The instrument for data collection was a 75- item researcher developed questionnaire titled: Instructional Media Availability and Utilization Questionnaire (IMAUQ). The face and content validation of the instrument was carried out by three experts, two from education technology and one in measurement and evaluation all from College of Education, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State. The internal consistency aspect of the reliability of the instrument was determined using cronbach alpha statistic and pearson product moment correlation which yielded an overall index of 0.88 and 0.78. The instrument has 4 clusters with four point rating scales of very high extent (VHE 4), High extent (HE 3) Low extent (LE2) and very low extent (VLE 1) with 4, 3, 2, and 1 respectively for 1 & 2 research questions while the other, strongly agreed (SA) Agreed (A) Disagreed (DA) and strongly disagreed (SD) with 4, 3, 2, & 1 ratings respectively addressed questions 3 & 4.. The data was collected by the researcher with the help of three research assistants. Out of 737 copies administered ,656 copies representing 89% of the entire instrument distributed were returned and used for data analysis. Data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviations to answer the four research questions raised for the study while t-test statistic was used to analyzed the four hypotheses that guided the study at 0.05 level of significance. The results showed among others that instructional media are available to a low extent in teaching and learning of social studies in Abia State and also, that there are some strategies to be adopted to ensure adequate utilization of instructional media   in teaching and learning of social studies in Abia State among others. Based on these findings, the researcher recommended among others, that Government and principals of public Secondary Schools should ensure adequate provision of instructional Media to Schools for effective teaching and   learning.