Instructional Materials

Large class size is foreseen to be one of the concerns in different countries including the Philippines. As such, to give solutions in a growing school population, the Department of Education has coped with these shortages by allowing the large class sizes in some areas in the country. It is found that it gives difficulties to students and to teachers. This study aimed to determine the impact of large class size on teachers' emotional and physical conditions and if there are significant relationships between the common teaching strategies (classroom management & discipline and instructional materials) and to teacher's emotional and physical conditions. It also sought to find if there is a significant difference in the strategies used by the primary and intermediate teachers in handling large class sizes. The subjects of the study are the primary and intermediate public-school teachers in chosen schools of Batangas Province. The finding showed that the teacher-respondents' emotional and physical conditions are sometimes affected by the large class sizes. Statistically, there are significant relationships between the common strategies used by the teachers in handling large class sizes to their physical and emotional conditions, that explains why the subjects of this study are not that totally affected by large class sizes while teaching. More so, the findings also revealed that there is no significant difference on the strategies used by the primary and intermediate teachers.

As teachers of language subjects in our tertiary institution (Federal College of Education, Kontagora in particular), it is disturbing to find that the quality of students admitted from our secondary schools into the NCE programme is low. This is what had prompted this team to look into this appalling phenomenon via a research work titled “An Appraisal of Language Teachers and Materials in Public Senior Secondary Schools in Niger State. Six research questions were answered reasonable, while two hypotheses were tested through percentage computation, T-test and analysis of variance respectively. The population of the study included language teachers and students in public senior secondary schools in Niger State. On the whole 200 schools were randomly selected from the three senatorial zones comprising 25 Local Government Areas of Niger State. A Quantity-and-quality-of-language-teachers-and-materials survey questionnaire was drafted for teachers and validated to yield a reliability index of 0.67 through Cronbach Alpha and was used for data collection. Also, a Qualitative-learning-experience-and-materials questionnaire was drafted for students and validated to yield a reliability index of 0.53 through Cronbach Alpha, and was used for data collection. Result showed that lack of relevant textbooks, qualified language teachers and teaching materials among others, are the main problems facing the teaching of language subjects in public senior secondary schools in Niger State. Other findings revealed by the study include: considerable awareness of an NPE provision on language subjects. It was also discovered that language teachers receive little or no motivation of any kind. The findings also showed that majority of the students had fair result in their final examination in English language, majority had poor result in Arabic, and very poor in Hausa, Igbo, French and Yoruba. The study recommended that: there should be immediate recruitment of qualified language teachers, regular seminars and workshops should be organized for language teachers; language teachers should be encouraged to stay and teach in schools in the rural areas. Government in collaboration with other stakeholders should provide relevant textbooks and other teaching materials for schools. These recommendations, when appropriated could ameliorate the problems bedeviling the teaching and learning of language subjects in public senior secondary schools in Niger State.
Keywords: Pedagogy, Evaluation, Instructional materials, Language Policy, Motivation.

Araştırma, etkisi hızla artan bilişim teknolojilerinin en önemli bileşeni bilgisayarın veri girişini sağlayan F klavyenin Acar Metoda göre öğrenenlerin derse ve öğretim materyaline ilgi düzeylerini ortaya koymayı amaçlamaktadır. Araştırma, yüz yüze anket uygulaması ile laboratuvar ortamında Acar metoda göre web tabanlı F klavye öğrenen ve Acar metoda göre Microsoft Word programı ile F klavye öğrenen öğrenciler üzerinde öğretim öncesi ve sonrası ölçümleri içeren deneysel bir araştırma niteliği taşımaktadır. Deneysel araştırmada veriler analitik klavye rubriği, derse ilgi ölçeği ve öğretim materyaline ilgi ölçeği ile elde edilmiştir. Araştırmanın literatür kısmını oluşturan klavye öğretimi, bilgisayar ve İnternet ortamında klavye öğretimi ve Acar metot ile on parmak klavye öğretimi konularında daha önceden yapılmış makale, bildiri, tez vb. gibi yazılı kaynaklardan elde edilmiştir. Araştırmanın çalışma grubunu, 2013-2014 öğretim-öğretim yılı güz yarıyılında Ankara ili Etimesgut ilçesinde bulunan Kariyer Koleji öğrencilerinden on parmak F klavye öğrenmek isteyen 70 öğrenci oluşturmuştur. Araştırma kapsamında öğrenenlerin başarı düzeyleri, derse ilgi düzeyleri ve öğretim materyaline ilgi düzeyleri belirlenmeye çalışılmıştır. Araştırma bulgularına göre; Acar Metoda göre on parmak F klavye öğrenen web ve word grubu öğrencilerinin öğretim programı başında klavye performansları (başarı düzeyleri) arasında çok az da olsa bir farklılık vardır. Öğretim programının başında deney ve kontrol gruplarındaki öğrencilerin performans gelişim düzeyleri yeni başlayan, sonunda ise yetenekli düzeyindedir. Web ve word grubu öğrencilerinin klavye öğretimi öncesi yapılan ön test, son test başarı puanları arasında da önemli bir farklılık olduğu ve web grubu öğrencilerinin word grubu öğrencilerine göre daha başarılı olduğu görülmüştür. Acar Metoda göre on parmak F klavye öğrenenlerin derse ilgi düzeylerinin her iki grupta da yüksek olduğu ve gruplar arasındaki farkın önemli olmadığı ve öğretim materyaline ilişkin ilgi düzeylerinin deney grubu öğrencilerinin kontrol grubu öğrencilerine göre daha yüksek olduğu görülmüştür. Acar metoda göre klavye öğretiminde kullanılan öğretim materyalinin deney grubu öğrencilerinin ilgisini artırdığı sonucuna varılmıştır.

The Department of Education Order 105, s. 2009 stated that as this country advances through the 21 st-century, the use of technology to research, organize, evaluate and communicate information has grown. In response to this, the use of E-book or Electronic Book is one of the 21st-century educational tools that provide opportunities to practice learning fundamentals in as many as possible. Moreover, this study aimed to assess the use of e-book as an instructional material in science learning among the junior high students of the University of Batangas, Batangas City, Philippines with the end purpose of developing activities that will enhance the teaching-learning process. It determined the usefulness of e-book in improving students' achievement, study habits and acquired skills including the common problems met by teachers and students in using an e-book. The descriptive method was used with a questionnaire as the main data gathering instrument with an interview. The respondents were composed of two groups, 40 Grade 10 students and 42 teachers are selected through purposive sampling. The statistical tools used were t-test and weighted mean. The results of the study revealed that teachers agreed that the content presents a series of activities in each section or unit, while students agreed that the contents have comprehensive and appropriate topics. The teachers agreed that the graphics use contrasting colors to the background for easy reading, while students agreed that it uses varying fonts and sizes. There are no significant differences between the assessment of teachers and students on the use of e-book as instructional material in learning Science in terms of contents, design, and graphics. The teachers and students agreed that e-book helps in enhancing student's achievement in the attainment of the content standard. The teachers agreed that students enhanced their acquired skills by demonstrating independent learning, while students agreed that their skills improved because they can transfer specific print-based reading skills to interactive. The common problems met by the respondents are the compatibility and design limitation of the software. The proposed activities have interactive visual features, varying fonts, sizes and color that can sustain the interest of the learners.

A rising epistemological paradigm in the cognitive sciences-embodied cognition-has been stimulating innovative approaches, among educational researchers, to the design and analysis of STEM teaching and learning. The paradigm promotes theorizations of cognitive activity as grounded, or even constituted, in goal-oriented multimodal sensorimotor phenomenology. Conceptual learning, per these theories, could emanate from, or be triggered by, experiences of enacting or witnessing particular movement forms, even before these movements are explicitly signified as illustrating target content. Putting these theories to practice, new types of learning environments are being explored that utilize interactive technologies to initially foster student enactment of conceptually oriented movement forms and only then formalize these gestures and actions in disciplinary formats and language. In turn, new research instruments, such as multimodal learning analytics, now enable researchers to aggregate, integrate, model, and represent students' physical movements, eye-gaze paths, and verbal-gestural utterance so as to track and evaluate emerging conceptual capacity. We-a cohort of cognitive scientists and design-based researchers of embodied mathematics-survey a set of empirically validated frameworks and principles for enhancing mathematics teaching and learning as dialogic multimodal activity, and we synthetize a set of principles for educational practice.

One of the most challenging tasks in teaching high school students is using appropriate learning material suitable to their level of proficiency, learning styles, and interests. This study aimed to develop and validate a graphic novel that can be used as a supplementary learning material in chemical bonding. The research utilized a design and development research design for the graphic novel development. An expert validation checklist was used to evaluate the validity of the graphic novel in terms of chemistry content, language, aesthetics, and social content. It was found out that the developed graphic novel has an overall rating of excellent as validated by the experts which signifies that the developed graphic novel has a high level of validity. It conforms to the criteria of instructional material development. Thus it can be used in teaching chemical bonding for Grade 9 students.