Abstract:
The Purpose of this study was to investigate the major factors affecting production and utilization of instructional materials in secondary schools of East Hararge Zone Oromia. For this study, descriptive survey method was used; both quantitative and qualitative data who were gathered through questionnaire, interviews, observation and documents. Of the total sample size of the respondents, 39(98.59%) teachers, 7(100%) principals, 8(100%) vice- principals ,30(100%) class representative students and 4(100%) Supervisors filled in and returned the questionnaire. In addition, seven SPC coordinators, seven principals, four supervisors were interviewed. The teachers and class representative students were sampled by simple random sampling. Besides, principals, vice- principals, Supervisors, and SPC coordinators were selected by availability sampling technique. The collected data were analyzed using frequencies, percentage and mean. The finding of the study revealed that there is a great deficiency for the production and utilization of instructional materials in the Schools due to various factors. Although most of the respondents in the secondary schools under study believed that instructional materials are important for learning purpose. In addition, to this a number of factors that hamper production and utilization of instructional materials of the secondary schools were: lack of budget, lack of skilled man power/trained person/ for the production and utilization of instructional materials were critical problems faced in all schools under study . It is therefore, recommended that, the school leaders should make School Pedagogical Centers functional, in planning, implementing, training enough skills man power and materials and by motivating those who are efficient in producing and utilizing instructional materials. To bring the intended goal of quality education every educational leader should coordinate and maintain the scarcity of materials and develop teachers’ skill of implementations by the help of preparing seminars, workshops and the like. Thus, assigning skilled man power and adequate budget allocations are the prime roles in enhancement for the production and utilization of instructional materials to concretize learning and promote the quality of education offered
