Effectiveness of Interactive Radio Instructions on Junior Secondary School Students’ Interest and Retention in Rivers South-East Senatorial District: Counselling Implications

Abstract

The study examined the effectiveness of Interactive Radio Instructions on Junior Secondary school students’ interest and retention in Rivers south –east senatorial district, Rivers state. 10,026 Junior Secondary Schools II students formed the population. Krejcre and Morgan (1970) sampling size table was used to arrive at 371 students, while a multistage sampling technique was used to sample 371 students (male 190 and female 181) for the study. The demography of the sample was 161 rural and 210 urban students. Students’ Interactive Radio Instructions Inventory SIRII was developed by the researchers and used for data collection. The questionnaire was given face validity by experts of Educational Technology and Measurement and Evaluation from the Department of Educational Foundations, Rivers State University Port Harcourt. SIRII was tested and a reliability of 0.71 was obtained using Kuder-Richardson Formula (KR-21). The findings from the study revealed that Interactive Radio Instructions were effective on students’ interest and retention. The findings also revealed that there was no significant difference between the impact of Interactive Radio Instruction on Retention between rural and urban students. Thus, the authors recommend the incorporation of Interactive Radio Instructions (IRI) into the curriculum as one of the strategies for reaching out to Junior Secondary School students. Also, counsellors should counsel parents to provide radios and enabling environments that will afford their children the opportunities to be involved in the Interactive Radio Instructions (IRI) programme, which is an effective tool for learning.