Availability of English Textbooks on Influencing Teachers' Effectiveness in Community Secondary Schools in Rombo District, Tanzania

Abstract

The study investigated the availability and influence of English textbooks on teaching and learning effectiveness in community secondary schools in Rombo District in Kilimanjaro region. The study was guided by the System Resource Theory on Organizational Effectiveness developed by Yutchman and Seashore (1967). A convergent parallel design involves a collection of both quantitative and qualitative data from 150 respondents, including 10 heads of schools, 20 English subject teachers, and 120 students, obtained through purposive and stratified random sampling techniques. Data were collected through questionnaires, interview schedules, and documentary reviews whose validity and reliability were established. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze quantitative data, which were summarized into frequency and percentage. The study found that the policy of student – English textbook policy ratio is implemented by different means, including encouraging teachers to use the available English textbooks, providing English textbooks in schools, giving homework to students, and improving the learning process in various ways, such as testing students after reading a passage, giving assignment, instruction and activities to students. The study concluded that, despite the shortage of English textbooks in community secondary schools, their existence brings effective learning and teaching in English language subjects. The study recommended that the government should provide enough English textbooks to the community secondary schools to ensure a good student-English textbooks ratio policy is achieved. Also, heads of schools should provide clinical supervision to teachers to exhaust English textbooks during the teaching process since some schools have textbooks that are not utilized effectively in teaching and learning activities.