COMPUTER-AIDED INSTRUCTION COMPETENCIES POSSESSED BY BUSINESS EDUCATION TEACHERS FOR TEACHING FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING IN SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN TARABA STATE NIGERIA.

ABSTRACT

Despite the advantages of using Computer Aided Instruction (CAI) in teaching and learning process, most business education teachers, especially in Taraba State rarely use this software in teaching financial accounting. This might be as a result of the teachers not possessing the required  competencies to  utilize  CAI,  and  so  this  study  intends  to  determine  the  CAI competencies possessed by business education teachers for teaching financial accounting in secondary schools in Taraba State. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design and was conducted inTaraba State. The study answered the following six research questions: What are the CAI competencies possessed by business education teachers for teaching trial balance in senior secondary schools in Taraba State? Three null hypotheses guided the study: There is no significant difference in the mean responses of male and female teachers on the CAI competencies possessed for teaching financial accounts in senior secondary schools in Taraba State. The population for the study was 186 business education teachers in the 611 senior  secondary  schools  found  in  Taraba  State.  Due  to  the  manageable  size  of  the population, no sampling and sample technique was used in the study. Therefore the entire

186 business education teachers in the 611 senior secondary schools found in Taraba State

served as  the  sample  for  the  study.  A structured questionnaire containing 39  items  on Business education teacher’s competency possessed on the use of CAI  in teaching and learning financial accounting in senior secondary schools in Taraba State was used to elicit responses  from  respondents  and  generated  data  for  the  study.  The  questionnaire  was subjected to face validation by three experts, with two in the Department of Vocational Teacher Education (Business Education Unit) University of Nigeria, Nsukka,and one from the Department of Computer Mathematics, Taraba state University, Taraba. Cronbach Alpha reliability method was used to determine the internal consistency of the instrument. The data collected for the study was analyzed using  mean to  answer the research questions and standard deviation to determine the closeness or otherwise of the responses from the mean, while t -test statistic was used to test the first two null hypotheses and Ananlysis of Variance statistic to test the last hypothesis of no significant difference at the probability of 0.05 level of significance at relevant degree of freedom with the use of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS)  version 20.  Findings were drawn from the analyses and based on the findings, conclusion and recommendations were made.

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Background of the Study

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

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Secondary education not only occupies an important place in the Nigeria education system, it also serves as the link between the primary and tertiary level of education. The Federal Republic of Nigeria  in National Policy  on Education (2004)  defines secondary education as the education that the child receives after primary education and before the tertiary  stage.  As  the  need  for  academic  achievement  of  students  offering  financial accounting intensifies, the teaching activities of the secondary school business teachers are receiving increased attention. Scholars underscore the importance of effective teaching and student learning outcomes has become a primary concern of secondary school management and  administrators. The generality of the  teacher including  business Education teachers becomes important for effective teaching in secondary schools.

A  teacher  is  someone  who  instructs others  or  provides activities,  materials  and guidance that facilitate learning in either formal or informal situations. A business education teacher is someone whose profession includes teaching, instructing, impacting knowledge, innovations, and guiding learners to pass through the learning process of acquisition of knowledge in  business related  subjects (Majasan,  2005).a business education teacher  is equipped  with  knowledge,  skills  and  aptitude  to  teach  business  studies,  commerce, marketing, financial accounting and other skilled subjects in the secondary school. Therefore, a business education teacher must be creative because of the critical role they play in creating an environment conducive to optimal student learning.

Financial Accounting is one of the vocational subjects taught in senior secondary schools  in Nigeria.  According to  Osuala (2004), financial accounting  is  the  process of

recording,  classifying,  selecting,   measuring,   interpreting,   summarizing  and   reporting financial information of an organization to the users for objective assessment and decision- making. Financial Accounting data are processed into accounting information through the use of accounting principles and conventions. The accounting conventions are the fundamentals that guide accountants in the recording, analyzing, interpreting and assessment of  accounting  information  as  well  as  the  preparation  and  interpretation  of  financial statements.  The  accounting  principles  are  generally  accepted  all  over  the  world.  The generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) include: the business entity concept, the continuing concern concept, conservatism, objectivity,  time  period,  revenue recognition, matching principle, cost principle, consistency principle, the materiality principle and the full disclosure principle (Commonwealth of Virginia, 2013; Find-an-accountant Website,  2013). The use of GAAP means that books of accounting prepared by accountants in one part of the world are easily understood by their counterparts in other parts of the world because the information system is based on principles that are widely accepted and universally used. According  to  National  Examination  Council,  NECO  (2002),  the  general  objectives  of studying financial accounting in the senior secondary school level include: to enable senior secondary  school  students  to  appreciate  the  basic  rules,  functions  and  principles  of accounting; to lay proper foundation for further studies on accountancy and allied subjects at higher  levels  and  to  enable the  students to  understand the  basic  accounting principles, practices and their applications to modern business activities and organizations.

At the senior secondary school level, financial accounting course  is made up of many topics which  includes; subsidiary books,  incomplete records, ledger,  trial  balance,  final accounts (trading account, profit  and  loss account, balance sheet and cash-flow), banks

reconciliation, control account, account of nonprofit making organizations, partnership and manufacturing account. The final account is among the important topics in financial accounting. According to Nwakoha (2002), final accounts constitute thirty five of the fifty objective questions and six out of the ten essay questions representing 65% of the entire financial accounting question in WAEC and NECO examinations. It is through final accounts that the financial position of an organization can be ascertained to know whether the business is  operating at  a  profit  or  loss  in  the  accounting period.  Understanding  final  accounts therefore will not only    help the student pass his examination but also as an accounting practitioner, the student will be able to understand when a company is operating at profit or loss. The  final accounts include: Trading account; Profit  and  loss accounts; Cash flow, Balance sheet and the value added statements.

According to FAO (1997), the starting point for preparing final accounts is the trial balance prepared by the book-keeper – all figures recorded on the trial balance are used in the final accounts. Trial balance is defined as a list of all the account balances, divided between debit and credit balances at a specific period. If the total debit balances equal the total credit balances, the trial balance is said to agree and shows that the arithmetic of all the entries is correct. It is not a perfect check of overall accuracy (Pearson, 2013). Competencies required by the business educator include the ability to demonstrate posting of items using drill and practice software; computing balances using excel; and creating opening stock using excel.

The trading account is an account which is prepared to find out the gross profit or gross loss of a certain accounting period. Trading account is prepared for ascertaining the overall result of trading i.e. buying and selling of goods. The ascertainment of overall result of trading is the ascertainment of gross profit earned or gross loss incurred as a result of the

trading  activities  by  a  business  during  a  particular  accounting  period  (Cox,  2012).  In preparing trading account in this era of ICT, the business education teacher should be able to demonstrate how to create a “T” account using computer, write a command that will compute cost of goods sold, compute gross profit or loss earned from trading activities using excel package.

Profit and Loss Account is a part of income statement. In this account, all indirect expenses such as administrative, selling, distribution and non-operating expenses are charged with the total of gross profit/gross loss and non-operating income in order to ascertain the excess of gains over the losses or vice-versa (Cox, 2012). In other words, it shows the net profit (or net loss) of the business for the accounting period (Usen and Nsimi, 2013After ascertaining the net profit or loss of the business enterprise at the end of a particular period, the businessman would also like to know the financial position of his business at a particular date. This is where balance sheet comes in. According to Batliboi in Cox (2012), a balance sheet is a statement prepared with a view to measuring the exact financial position of a business as at a certain fixed date. The balance sheet has two sides – assets side and liabilities side. Assets are shown on the right hand side and the liabilities are shown on the left. It is based on the equation that what an entity owns on a given date must be equal to what it owes on that date.

Obi (2005) enumerated the method of teaching accounting to include: journalizing, posting to ledger, trial balance, interpretation of financial statement and the use of computer and computer accounting packages in accounting. According to Petrina (2009), instructional models applied in teaching financial accounting include: Direct instructional model: Here the teacher impacts knowledge or demonstrates a skill and the students make meaning out of it

for themselves. Indirect instructional model: Here the students interact with each other, with information and the materials available. The teacher here is only an organizer or a facilitator. Experiential instruction model: Through experience and feeling the students here are actively involved in the learning process. Independent instructional model: This models involved students interacting more with the content, with less external control of the teacher. That is more of learner–centered type of model. Many of our standard instructional methods of conveying knowledge have been shown to be relatively ineffective in students’ ability to master and then retain important concepts. This is because learning through some methods of teaching is passive rather than active (Osuala, 2004). In the past, students learn by traditional instructional methods. The instructional models have shown that computer can play a vital role in all the models. In this present era of computer advancement, Business Education teachers can impact knowledge with computer aided instruction (CAI) and students can interact with the computers with or without the teacher’s intervention.

According  to  Abuseileck,  (2007),  Computer  Assisted  Instruction  (CAI)  can  be defined as the direct use of computer for the facilitation of learning. The use of CAI in teaching has produced many positive effects. Brummer (2004) have used CAI to obtain interesting positive results in teaching and learning activities in various science and social science based courses. Computer has been found useful in vocational education and most importantly as a veritable instructional tool (Ogu, 2003). The use of computers and CAI packages in a classroom setting have been effective in stimulating student’s interest and in providing individualized tuition at the students own pace and direction. A business education teacher is one who must have broad knowledge in all the major components of business.

A major characteristic feature of CAI, according to Akinyemi (1997), is that as it is a learner-controlled instruction proper individualization of instruction is enhanced when a student can control his/her learning in terms of choice of materials and in accordance with his/her intellectual ability. The CAI system incorporates the means for individualizing the experience of students in a manner that is prescriptive, personal and self-conscious. The use of CAI is often identified as motivational practices used by teachers for developing a positive learning environment (Ferguson and Campinha-Bacote, 2009; Hill, 2008; Walter, 2000). In other words a business education teacher must be knowledgeable in the use of CAI in teaching business subject, secretarial components, marketing and distributive education subjects, financial accounting subjects, and teaching industrial work experience (Anioke,

2004). Therefore, for business education teachers to be effective in their instruction delivery, they must brace up with Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI).

The general mode of operation of most CAI is that it presents the learners with materials giving the learner options and procedures to follow. The learner communicates with the computer using the keyboard, mouse or pad (games). The students’ performance is assessed and rated as the learner progresses and a grade is produced at the end to certify learning. This is commonly applicable to CAI models (technologies) such as games, drills and practices and electronic books.

A  variety of  software  programs  is  used  for  the  teaching  of accounting  courses enabling the achievement of different teaching and learning goals. The main types of CAI software employed for teaching financial accounting, according to Boyce (1999), include: Problem solving/productivity software: Primarily including programs-banks (groups of software applications) of topic and exercises used by the students for practice; multiple

choice  questions,  quizzes  and  others  can  be  used  for  better  understanding  accounting concepts. With proper feedback, the students are able to correct their mistakes and to focus on important points of the subject taught. These programs are designed for student learning of simple accounting operations as well as developing skills such as for example, the ability to identify, analyze, interpret and choose among alternatives provided (Gujarathi, 2005) presented the results of using a spreadsheet productivity program (by Drill-and-practice software: Includes programs for accounting problems with which students have the opportunity to practice and improve their mistakes.

The foregoing programs include modeling and simulation in order to create an accounting problem that the students are trying to solve, under conditions of (simulated) reality in the real world (Boyce, 1999). Marriott (2004) had studied the effect on student learning accounting with the use of a “game” simulation. It turned out that the use of simulation and model spreadsheet, gave the opportunity to the students to study a work- problem as a whole, combining knowledge from different courses and acquiring more empirical skills and abilities.

For the teacher to be able to apply CAI effectively, certain competencies are required. Competency refers to the knowledge and skill required for performing and supporting a process. It is a combination of skills, abilities and knowledge needed to perform a specific task. Competency have factors which are observable and measurable (Jones, Voorhees and Paulson, 2002; Oregon University, 2013). On the other hand it is the ability to translate knowledge into action that results in the desired performance and is needed by business educators  for  modern  classroom  teaching  using  CAI.  As  earlier  pointed  out,  the competencies ranges from the ability to use excel, simulation software, gaming software,

drilling software, to be able to apply tutorial software. Obi (2005) explained that it is more difficult to develop competency than to teach facts and skills. It is therefore important, to use effective and efficient teaching method and facilities such as CAI to teach the concepts of financial accounting. The use of CAI is expected to reduce high rate of failure by students in financial accounting.

Factors that contribute to the failure of students in financial accounting are known generally, as had been pointed out by many researchers. School location has been viewed as one factor that affects students’ academic achievement (Akpan, 2001). Over the past two decades, research has indicated that the educational aspirations of male and female teachers who study in the rural areas lag behind those of their urban counter-parts (Hu, 2003; Arnold, Newman, Gaddy, & Dean, 2005). Related findings from other studies have further indicated that students from rural schools place less value on academics (Stern, 2004; Ley, Nelson & Beltyukova, 2006).

A number of studies indicate that on the average, new teachers are less effective than those with some experience (Clotfelter, Charles T.Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L.Vigdor 2007, Sass 2007). This and other research shows that, on average, teachers with more than 20 years of experience are more effective than teachers with no experience (Ladd, 2008).

Therefore, this study seeks to determine the CAI competencies possessed by business education teachers for teaching financial accounting in senior secondary schools in Taraba State and also to determine if variables such as sex, locations and years of experience of teachers  have  any  influence  on  the  competencies possessed  by  the  business  education teachers in using excel,  simulation software, gaming software, and drilling  software in teaching and learning of financial accounting in senior secondary schools in Taraba State..

Statement of the Problem

Over the years the poor performance of students in financial accounting has been a growing concern in Nigeria. According to WAEC reports of May/June 2000 to 2012 senior secondary school examinations revealed high rate of failure in financial accounting. Research has also shown that failure in financial accounting in Taraba State, between 2001 to 2011 ranges from 43% to 67% (Taraba State Ministry of Education Report, 2011). To buttress this further, the National Business and Technical Examination Board (NABTEB, 2011) in Taraba State revealed poor performance of students in financial accounting and attributed this to poor use of instructional methods such as CAI by business education teachers. The lack of effective teaching of financial accounting seems to be the most contributing factor to poor performance. Ehiamatalor (1990) opined that the learning of financial accounting depends on the use of effective instructional method and the availability of resources, while Okwuanaso and Nwazor (2011) observed that instructional methods of teaching financial accounting largely determines whether the students will learn.

Specifically, many reports on the use of CAI instructional method continue to come from developed countries, though teachers have began to take a closer look at computer assisted instructions as a tool in their array of teaching techniques, yet there has not been much research report pertain to it in Nigeria (Ehiamatalor 1990).

Despites the advantages of using CAI in teaching and learning process, most business education teachers, especially in Taraba State rarely use this software in teaching financial accounting. Therefore, this study seeks to determine the CAI competencies possessed by business education teachers for teaching financial accounting in senior secondary schools in Taraba State and also to determine if variables such as sex, locations and years of experience

of teachers have any influence on the competencies possessed by the business education teachers in using excel,  simulation software, gaming software, and drilling  software in teaching and learning of financial accounting in senior secondary schools in Taraba State. Purpose of the Study

The major purpose of this study is to determine CAI competencies possessed by business education teachers for teaching financial accounting in senior secondary schools in Taraba State. Specifically, the study sought to:

1. determine the CAI competencies possessed by business education teachers for teaching trial balance in senior secondary schools in Taraba State;

2. determine the CAI competencies possessed by business education teachers for teaching trading account in senior secondary schools in Taraba State;

3. determine the CAI competencies possessed by business education teachers for teaching profit and loss account in senior secondary schools in Taraba State;

4. determine the CAI competencies possessed by business education teachers for teaching balance sheet in senior secondary schools in Taraba State;

5. determine the CAI competencies possessed by business education teachers for teaching cash flow in senior secondary schools in Taraba State;

6. determine the CAI competencies possessed by business education teachers for evaluating learning experiences in senior secondary schools in Taraba State.

Significance of the Study

The study will be of immense benefits to accounting teachers, students of financial accounting, Taraba State government, the Ministry of education, policy makers and future researchers.

The findings on CAI competencies possessed by business education teachers for teaching trial balance in senior secondary schools will be of tremendous benefit to financial accounting teachers because it  will enable the teachers to maintain accuracy, speed and efficiency in the class room. Teachers of financial accounting will find teaching very easy and interesting via the use of CAI. The findings will also provide information to the financial accounting teachers and students on how to effectively utilize CAI for teaching making the study beneficial to teachers and students of financial accounting by increasing their interest and understanding of abstract accounting concepts.

The findings on CAI competencies possessed by business education teachers for teaching trading account in senior secondary schools will provide information to the ministry of Education by exposing the officials further on how to avoid delay in computation of entries. It will help the teachers to know their areas of deficiencies (if any) in the use of CAI. They will then seek for improvement of their competencies on the effective use of CAI.

The findings on CAI competencies possessed by business education teachers for teaching profit and loss account in senior secondary schools will be useful to the Taraba State government, ministry of education, and policy makers as the study will provide information on the advantage and need for computer assisted instructions in the secondary schools, and thus make the necessary policies and facilities available to schools for effective use of CAI in the leaning of financial accounting to students.

The findings on CAI competencies possessed by business education teachers for teaching cash flow in senior secondary schools will be of benefits to teachers as it will provide information on how efficiently to use CAI in producing cash flow statement.

Finally, the study will serve as a source of literature for the future researchers and the entire public.

Research Questions

The study answered the following research questions:

1.  What  are  the  CAI  competencies  possessed  by  business  education  teachers  for teaching trial balance in senior secondary schools in Taraba State?

2.  What  are  the  CAI  competencies  possessed  by  business  education  teachers  for teaching trading account in senior secondary schools in Taraba State?

3.  What  are  the  CAI  competencies  possessed  by  business  education  teachers  for teaching profit and loss account in senior secondary schools in Taraba State?

4.  What  are  the  CAI  competencies  possessed  by  business  education  teachers  for teaching balance sheet in senior secondary schools in Taraba State?

5.  What  are  the  CAI  competencies  possessed  by  business  education  teachers  for teaching cash flow in senior secondary schools in Taraba State?

6.  What are the Competencies possessed by financial accounting teachers in the use of CAI in evaluating of learning experiences in senior secondary schools in Taraba State?

Hypotheses

The following null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance;

H01:    There is no significant difference in the mean responses of male and female teachers on  the  CAI  competencies  possessed  for  teaching  financial  accounts  in  senior secondary schools in Taraba State.

H02:    There is no significant difference in the mean responses of teachers located in the rural and urban areas on the CAI competencies possessed for teaching  financial accounts in senior secondary schools in Taraba State.

H03:   There is no significant difference in the mean responses of teachers on the CAI competencies possessed for teaching final accounts in senior secondary schools in Taraba State with respect to years of experience.

Scope of the Study

The study was carried out in the senior secondary schools in Taraba State. It  is focused on the CAI competencies possessed by business education teachers for teaching financial accounting in senior secondary schools in Taraba State. The study covered the CAI competencies possessed by the business education teachers for effective teaching of financial accounting which specifically include: trial balance, trading account, profit and loss account, balance sheet and cash flow.

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