Utilization Of Health Communication And Instructional Materials As Correlate Of Fitness And Health Education Knowledge Among Learners In Institutions Of Oro Local Government, Kwara State, Nigeria

The utilization of health education instructional materials in secondary schools has become very important to making health education and allied fields easy for the teacher to handle and the learners who are the beneficiaries. The research design employed was the descriptive design of the survey type. The study population comprised teachers and learners in institutions in the Oro local government of Kwara State, Nigeria. The stratified random sampling technique was used to respondents. 811 learners were selected while 121 teachers were selected as a sample. The main instruments were the Health Education materials Inventory (HETMI) completed by the health education teachers and the Health Knowledge Test completed by the learners. The knowledge test was drawn from the J.S.S text book and the primary six text books. The two instruments were duly validated and tested for reliability.

The Pearson Moment Correlation Coefficient was used to determine the relationship existing between availability and Utilization of education teaching materials in the institutions of Oro at 0.05 level of significance. It was revealed by the study that significant relationship exist between availability and utilization of health communication materials and health knowledge test scores of learners in the secondary and tertiary institutions in Oro local government of Kwara state, Nigeria. Also, significant relationship was found between availability and utilization of electronic materials and health knowledge test scores of learners in institutions that have and those that do not have. Directional conclusions were made based on the findings.

The implication of these findings is that the present situation where teaching is carried out without the use of instructional materials is not acceptable for students who are not exposed to instructional materials whether, electronic, textual or print medial consistently perform poorly as revealed by this study and others cited. Based on the findings and conclusions of this study, it was recommended among others that there should be deliberate tooling up of schools in respect of health education instruction and materials especially audio-visuals, internet and other relevant electronic gadgets with all stake holders being involved.