Instructional Materials and Students ’ Academic Achievement in Physics : Some Policy Implications

The study examined the effect of using standardized an improvised instructional materials on Academic Achievement of Secondary School Physics St udents in Oyo State, Nigeria. The research design adopted was quasi-experimental of the pretes t – post test non-randomized control group. Purposive sampling was used to obtain a sample of t hree co-educational secondary schools. Each school provided one S.S. III class for the study. T wo instruments were used in the study, the Physics Achievement Test (PAT) to measure students’ achieve m nt and Teachers Instructional Guide (TIG) to train the teachers in the experimental groups. The instrument was pilot tested to ascertain reliabili ty. The reliability coefficient was 0.76. Three hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 l evel of significance. Data were analysed using ANOVA a nd ANCOVA. Findings revealed that there is a significant difference in the achievement of studen ts taught using standard instructional materials, t hose taught with improvised instructional material and t hose in the conventional instruction. Thus, the students taught with improvised instructional mater i ls obtained the highest achievement score at post test (F=74.94), followed by those with standard ins tructional materials (F=63.07), while the control group scored the lowest (F=39.89). Also, there w as no significant effect of gender on students’ achievement in Physics although, females did better than males. Finally, there was no significan t interaction effect of treatment and gender on stude nt achievement in Physics. Thus, Physics teache rs need to be resourceful in instructional mater i ls selection, planning and utilization so as to reduce the cost of production and maintenance of instruc tional materials. The researchers conclude tha t the utilization of improvised instructional materials promote and enhance effective teaching-learning process, thus, Physics teachers should be enc ouraged to use them in secondary education programme.