Criteria for Selecting Relevant Learning Resources by Teachers of Social Education and Ethics in Bungoma District, Kenya

 
Table 2: Teacher Responses on how to improve the 
Teaching of SEE
Suggestion
Frequency of 
response.
Percentage
%
1.
The humanity department heads 
should strictly supervise use of 
learning resources by teachers
10
8%
2.
S.E.E students should be asked 
questions related to content learnt 
with use of learning resources.
30
25%  
3.
S.E.E teachers should be helped by 
departmental heads to choose 
relevant types of learning resources 
for specific lessons.
22
19%
4.
The government should train 
teachers to be posted to schools to 
properly utilize available learning 
resources.
58 
48%
Total number of SEE teachers
120
100%
 
Criteria Teachers Use to Select Types of Learning 
Resources for Teaching SEE
Teachers responded to various statements about the 
use and selection of relevant learning resources by 
responding to a few statements. Their responses 
indicated that 18(15%)
 
of them picked on any 
resource that was available and 102(85%) picked on 
those resources relevant to the objectives. No teacher 
was found not to be using types of learning resources 
to teach SEE. This was interpreted to mean that SEE 
teachers considered those resources they used for 
teaching as relevant. Davies (1975) views a resource 
as something or someone from whom a learner could 
obtain information directly without interpretation. In 
view of these sentiments, the teacher’s responses 
expressed a higher percentage of use of resources. 
These kinds of resources are normally the most 
available resources to teachers and therefore reported 
to be used by majority of them. A good number of 
teachers who recorded frequencies of 72(60%), 
80(67%), 60(50%), 72(60%) percentages used 
pamphlets, handouts, models duplicating machines 
and reference books respectively. Such types of 
learning resources are definitely within the reach of 
the teacher because most of them like handouts can 
be teacher made.
However, the general view that SEE was easy and the 
fact those students performed better in SEE 
examinations may have influenced the large number 
of response 102(85%) teachers to mean that learning 
resources they were using were relevant. This 
explains why Wanjira (2001), in a presentation paper 
on ‘types of instructional material and Evaluation in 
Social Education and Ethics’ laments that there was a 
moral degradation because, although SEE is equally 
if not more so concerned with the effective domain, 
the education system is examination centred and 
mainly 
dwells 
on 
the 
cognitive 
domain. 
Consequently, most teachers insist on memory of 
content rather than moral development of the 
learners. 
The authors also investigated how selection of 
learning resources used by teachers affected learning. 
Students were asked to respond to a few statements 
regarding choice of types of learning resources by 
their teachers. Table 3 presents their responses as 
follows: 1152(60%) students agreed to the statement 
that ‘the SEE teacher is very good at selecting 
learning resources that appeal to your senses after 
every lesson’; a low percentage of 192(10%) students 
were undecided, while 576(30%) strongly disagreed.