Appraisal of principals’ perception on the influence of the level of availability of library resources on the service delivery of secondary school teachers in Enugu State

Abstract

The paper examined principals’ perception on the influence of the level of availability of library resources on the service delivery of secondary school teachers in Enugu State. Survey research design was adopted for the study. Two research questions were raised and two hypotheses formulated to guide the study. The population for the study was 45 principals in 45 public secondary schools in Agbani Education Zone of Enugu State. Census sampling technique was adopted to select all the 45 principals in the study because the population were small and manageable. The instrument used for data collection was a researchers’ constructed questionnaire titled “Library Resources availability and teachers’ Service Delivery Questionnaire (LRATSDQ). The instrument was divided into two sections; A and B. Section A is a check list that was used to collect data on the level of availability of library resources in the schools under study while Section B contained 10 items that was used to elicit principals’ perception on the influence of level of availability of library resources on teachers’ service delivery. The section B was a modified 4-point Likert scale of Strongly Agree (SA) - 4 points, Agree (A) - 3 points, Disagree (D) – 2 and Strongly Disagree (SD) - 1 point. The instrument was validated by two experts in Educational Measurement and Evaluation, Faculty of Educational Foundation Studies, University of Calabar. The reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach Alpha Analysis. The reliability coefficient value yielded 1.86 which was considered adequate for the study. The results revealed that the availability of library resources in public secondary schools in Agbani Education Zone was significantly low. Result also revealed that level of availability of library resources significantly influence service delivery of secondary school teachers in terms of instructional delivery, academic advising and students’ evaluation. It was therefore recommended among others that Government should prioritize the building and equipping of libraries in all public secondary schools with necessary library resources.