ABSTRACT

The study sought to examine the issues of community based resources and instructional delivery in Agricultural Education in Universities in South East, Nigeria. Five (5) specific purposes guided the study, five (5) research questions were answered, and five (5) null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted survey research design. The population for the study was 68 lecturers of Agricultural Education from the public Universities consisting of Federal and State owned universities in the area. The entire population was used because they were manageable and accessible. The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire titled Issues of Community Based Resources and Instructional Delivery in Agricultural Education Questionnaire (ICBRIDAEQ), consisted of 133 items. The questionnaire was subjected to face validation by three experts, two from the Department of Agricultural and Vocational Education and one from the Department of Science Education (Measurement and Evaluation Unit) of Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State. The reliability of the instrument was established by a pilot study carried out on 15 Agricultural Education lecturers in University of Uyo and Akwa-Ibom State University and the result was analyzed using Cronbach Alpha reliability method to obtain a reliability coefficient of 0.78. Data were collected with the help of three Research Assistants. 68 copies of the questionnaire were administered and 64 copies (94%) were retrieved and analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer research questions and t-test was used to test hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. It was found from the analysis that there is high level of availability of community based resources and low level of utilization of community based resources in instructional delivery in Agricultural Education in Universities in South East, Nigeria; there are 13 criteria for selection of community based resources. There are 12 problems associated with the availability and utilization of community based resources for effective instructional delivery in Agricultural Education in Universities in South East, Nigeria. There are 10 solutions to the problems identified, among the solutions are provision of adequate fund for agricultural education practical and giving adequate time to Agricultural Educators to explore the community for community based instructional resources. Among the recommendations are that: University management and the community leaders should build a stronger relationship in order to enable the lecturers have access to use the community resources in instructional delivery in Universities community leaders and development unions should build more educational resources around their communities while maintaining already existing ones to enable them to be available for utilization by universities around them when needed.