ABSTRACT
The study examined teachers’ perception, evaluation and usability of the New Concept English for Junior Secondary Schools 3 for English Studies instruction in Junior Secondary schools in Bayelsa State. Specifically, the study also examined whether the quality of the New Concept English for Junior Secondary Schools 3 was appropriate for English Studies instruction. It equally, examined teacher’ perception of the usability of the textbook and also examined whether there were any differences in teachers’ perception of the usability of the textbook based on intervening variables of sex, years of teaching experience and length of use of the textbook. To guide the study, five research questions were raised and three were hypothesized and tested at 0.05 level of significance.
The study adopted the descriptive survey research design which utilized a quantitative data collection method. All the 195 teachers teaching English Studies in Junior Secondary School 3 (JSS3) in the 187 public secondary schools in Bayelsa State made up the population of the study. The sample was made up of 84 teachers (31 males and 53 females) teaching English Studies in Junior Secondary School 3 (JSS3). The stratified and random sampling technique was adopted for the study. One instrument, a questionnaire, was used for data collection. The questionnaire is made up of three sections, A, B, and C. Section A is structured to elicit demographic data from teachers such as sex, years of teaching experience and length of use of the textbook. Section B is a checklist structured to evaluate the textbook. The checklist is an adaptation of Wuttisrisriporn and Usaha’s (2019) checklist. Section C is the usability scale adapted from the System Usability Scale developed by Brooke (1996). Face and content validity of the instrument was determined by the researchers’ supervisor and two language educators in the department. To ascertain the reliability of the instrument, a trial testing was carried out using 14 JSS3 English Studies teachers who were not part of the main study. The reliability of the instrument was estimated using Cronbach Alpha formula and the reliability coefficients obtained are – Section B = 0.96, Section C = 0.93. Descriptive statistics of frequency counts, percentage, mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, while the independent sample t-test was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance.
The findings revealed that teachers are generally satisfied with the quality of the New Concept English for Junior Secondary Schools 3 for English Studies instruction. The result also revealed that the usability as perceived by the teachers was high as both the effectiveness and efficiency subscales were high. However, the teachers rated the satisfaction subscale very high. Sex, years of teaching experience and length of use of the textbook did not significantly influence teachers’ perception of the usability of the New Concept English for Junior Secondary Schools 3. It was recommended amongst others that teachers should be encouraged to use the adapted checklist to assess the quality of various ESL textbooks used in the state and the country at large.
