CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the study
It is a pertinent fact that agriculture has played a very significant role in man‟s civilization. Products such as food, fiber, fuel, raw materials for drugs and many assorted product come from agriculture. Many nations‟ economy has depended on agriculture. For instance, Nigeria in the early 1960s before the „Oil boom‟ depended on agriculture for her economic sustenance. It is the invaluable contributions of the agriculture to our nation that engendered our educationists and government to make provision in the National Policy on Education for practical agriculture in the curriculum of the Senior and Junior Secondary Schools as a core subject (FGN, 1990). Inspite of efforts made to promote agriculture in this wise, its impact is yet to be felt in total. The West African Examination Council and the National Examinations Council, the major examination bodies in Nigeria have been recording poor results from candidates who sit for the examinations on agricultural science. Besides, the enrollment for the examination in agricultural science is on the decline (Bassey,2011). The stakeholders and many more could attribute this to poor methods of teaching, poor implementation of Educational Policies.
According to Ezewu (2007), asserted that government, manufacturers and parents have exhibited concern about the quality of Education that have been acquired by their wards. It is the level and quality of an individual‟s education that is used as parameter to measure and predict the contribution that the individual makes to the society. The effect of what one learns should be seen in the individual, his environment and the society at large. Learning agricultural science, techniques and acquiring skills through various practicalscarried out in the class and school farms are the basis for this knowledge gained. According to Isangedighi (2007), exposure to training is important if learning must take place.
Learning is refer to as any relatively permanent change in behavior, interpretation or emotional response because of previous experience. Similarly, learning can be defined as a change in behavior or performance which is as a result of experience and practice and which makes individual face later situations differently (Danga,2002). Furthermore, the true test of learning can be seen in the positive improvement of the learner towards a given task. Thus, an individual is assuming to have learnt techniques and skills if there is a remarkable change in his academic performance during and after the course of his study.It can be said that the success of an educational programme can be measured about degree with which its beneficiaries perform academically. Myriad of factors have been known to influence the academic achievement of students in their various school endeavors (Bassey,2011).
These factors can either be personal (poor self-concept, motives, readiness, emotions, attitudes and maturational level of the students) or environmental. Studies have identified allied factors such as students‟ individual differences (personal causal factors), teaching learning strategy (system causal factors), family causal factors and the teacher (academic causal factors) to interfere with the performance level of the students. This research work will focus mostly on the teaching / learning strategy (system causal factors). The rate of failure in the public examinations has persistently increased and this has attracted the attention of many stakeholders involved. The belief is that no nation can develop scientifically and technologically without quantitative and qualitative educational system (Alao, 1990).
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EFFECTS OF TWO DIMENSIONAL MEDIA AND CONVENTIONAL METHOD OF TEACHING ON STUDENTS PERFORMANCE IN AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN NIGERIA
