Assessment Of Content Adequacy And Readability Levels Of Recommended Social Studies Textbooks In Oyo State Nigeria

In the teaching and learning of any subject, both teachers and students usually rely on text materials and, as such, it is not doubtful then that the quality of textbooks in use will determine, to a large extent, the quality of learning and transfer of such learning. Owing to scarcity of studies on assessment of Social Studies textbooks in Oyo State, this study, therefore, investigated content adequacy and readability of two Social Studies textbooks used in secondary schools in Oyo State, Nigeria, namely: Macmillan and Basic Social Studies textbooks. Specifically, the study determined the: (i) adequacy of the content and learning activities of the textbooks; (ii) adequacy of the content and learning activities, on each level of each of the textbooks; (iii) readability of the two textbooks; and (iv) difference in the teachers’ perception of the content adequacy of the textbooks.rnThe descriptive survey design was adopted for this study. Out of 635 public secondary schools in the six education zones in Oyo State 65 were sampled. Out of a total of 112,500 junior secondary school III Social Studies students, 778 were selected and all the 405 Social Studies teachers were involved in the study. The instruments for data collection were Emerola’s 8-points model of Quantitative Approach to the Content Evaluation, Cloze Procedure and Social Studies Readability Test (SSRT). Emerola’s 8-points model was used to answer the research questions, while the independent t-test was used to test the formulated hypotheses. rnThe findings of the study were that:rni. Macmillan Social Studies textbook had overall higher content adequacy rating score of 4.02 on the six indices of Topical Coverage Index (TCI), Learning Activity Index (LAI), Chapter Summary Index (CSI), Study Question Index (SQI), Illustration Index (ILI) and Under Represented Population Index (UPPI), while Basic Social Studies textbooks had a lesser rating score of 2.85 on the same six indices;rnii. Mean content adequacy score of JSS I, II and III in Macmillan Social Studies textbooks on the six indices were 1.44, 1.74 and 0.84, respectively, while the mean score on content adequacy of JSS I, II and III Basic Social Studies textbooks were 1.94, 0.35 and 0.56, respectively.rniii. Macmillan Social Studies textbook had a low readability score of 43.7%, while Basic Social Studies textbook had a very high readability score of 80.1% ; andrniv. There was a significant difference in the teachers’ perception of content adequacy of the two Social Studies textbooks in favour of Macmillan (t=2.28; ρ=0.02 <0.05).rnThe study concluded that the two recommended textbooks were adequate in content, implying that the two recommended textbooks were appropriate for Social Studies teaching and learning. However, the Basic Social Studies textbook was better in readability than the Macmillan Social Studies textbook. It was, therefore, recommended that the two textbooks should continue to be used but Macmillan Social Studies textbooks needed improvement in readability while the content of Basic Social Studies should be reviewed periodically.

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