Evaluation of Content And Readability of Recommended Textbooks on Agriculture For Upper Basic Education in Enugu State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study was carried out to determine the adequacy of the content and the readability of the recommended textbooks on Agriculture for Upper Basic Education in Enugu state. Eighteen research questions were posed and answered by the study. The evaluation research design was adopted. The population of the study was the 29 recommended textbooks on Agriculture for Upper Basic Education schools in Enugu state. The sample for the study was 27 recommended main textbooks on Agriculture for Upper Basic Education schools in Enugu state. A purposive sampling technique was used to select the textbooks. All the 27 main textbooks which are separate volumes for either of the upper basic education I or II or III students’ class levels were selected. Quantitative Approach to Content Evaluation of Science Textbooks (QACEST) with A 5-point Quantitative model instrument was used by the expert lecturers to obtain information on the topical coverage, learning activities illustrations, chapter summaries and study questions variables of the content of the textbooks, while Cloze procedure was used to develop the Readability Tests of the Recommended Agriculture Textbooks (RTRAT) instrument, which was used to obtain information from the students on the readability of the textbooks. The RTRAT instrument is of three categories: RTRAT I version of the instrument for Upper Basic Education (UBE) I students, RTRAT II version of the instrument for UBE II students and RTRAT III version of the instrument for UBE III students. Each version of the RTRAT instrument test items were drawn from the passages of the textbooks for each class level. Each class level test items consists of 180 words which were omitted in the drawn passages and were filled by each students of a particular class level. The QACEST and RTRAT instruments were face validated by three experts. The temporary stability of the RTRAT instrument test items was determined using test re-test method. The sets of scores obtained were correlated using Spearman rank order correlation coefficient, which yielded coefficients of 0.85, 0.80 and 0.70 for RTRAT I, RTRAT II and RTRAT III versions of the instrument respectively. Three hundred and ninety-eight copies of the RTRAT questionnaire were administered to the students through the researcher and the three research assistants. All the administered 398 copies of the RTRAT questionnaire were retrieved and analyzed. QACEST Index which consists of Topical coverage index (TCI), Learning activities index (LAI), Illustrations index (ILI), Chapter summaries index (CSI) and Study questions index (SQI) were used to analyze data that answered research questions 1 to 15, while percentage and bar charts were used to analyze data for answering research questions 16 to 18. It was found out that the content of 2 of the 27 evaluated textbooks were inadequate in learning activities, illustrations, chapter summaries and study questions variables. It was also found that 25 out of the 27 books were not readable while 2 were readable. It was recommended that the Enugu state ministry of education should ensure that the authors improve on their books by providing for the deficits found in the textbooks in their subsequent editions.