The financial constraint would not be so much a burden on teachers in related to production, purchases and subsequent use in the classroom. Thus the main focus of instructional materials is the philosophy of pragmatism. Bishop (1995) was of the opinion that teachers can get instructional materials from resource centres located in the teacher’s colleges.
A resource centre contains all the things teachers are likely going to find useful in their classroom, such as books, reference materials, kits of newspaper, articles, photographs, diagrams, documents, statistical tables, journals and paintings etc. such collections will prove of great value to teachers as they constitute a bank of materials on which the teachers can draw. Furthermore, he stated that much can be done with limited funds and limited regulation. The energy and expertise now locked up in homes and factories and perhaps even in jails could be reasonably applied to educational needs and relatively little or no cost in the past.
Many countries have scarce funds on importing equipment and other resource materials from abroad. This he said can be a very expensive business, so many countries, so many countries have established own local equipment production unit to provide low cost equipment. Several countries have set mobile serving units that travel from school, helping to service their broken equipment. Also in many countries teachers are provided with skills or tools boxes containing basic instruments to help them produce in expensive instructional materials on their own.
The teacher’s educational material production project of the Federal Ministry of Education listed the following as the sources of audio- visual equipment-
· The federal unit
· State ministry of information
· United state information service (USIS)
· Federal ministry of education (audio-visual section)
· The British council
· Foreign embassies in Nigeria
· African studies department of university
· Industrial and commercial companies such as UAC, Shell etc.
· Museums
· Libraries
Edwards (1993) stressed that in Great Britain effective educational innovation rarely comes from the central authority, instead it grows locally as a means of meeting local education authority and often it is the result of the initiative by few British education system. He warned that the relatively pior production have been continually pushed up so as to increase the aesthetic education of children and reluctant readers, it is criminal to confront them with a mass of badly presented materials with slabs of barely type and muzzy ink blots masquerading as illustration.
He opined that with reprographic materials, the teacher is able to produce quickly the materials which more closely match the needs of his students than those the commercial product, particularly in those studies where local bias is important with adequate in- service training provision of technical help and advisory services, excellent work can be done and in many schools, teachers centres actually been done. He enumerated the following resources of teaching resources.
· The public library
· Museums
· Record offices and achieves department
· Teacher’s centre
· Universities and colleges of Education
· Teachers subject association
Bishop (1995) noted that one could fill pages illustrating the ingenuity shown in the improvisation of teaching materials using locally available resources. Bamboo can give you the abacus, constalk can be used for modelling, sand for maps etc. a bicycle can be used to provide endless lessons in physic, order children can be encouraged to produce materials for their younger colleagues’ e.g. making drawing books from scrap-paper and newsprint, making toys and simple games equipment.
He expressed the view that:
· Local production of equipment is to be preferred to the expense of importing new equipment.
· Producing one’s own instructional materials can ensure that they are relevant, flexible and adaptable.
· Efficient mechanisms for distribution of teaching materials is essential do any curriculum implementation.
· Whenever possible, improves, use only untapped resources eg prisoners in jail can be used purposefully to make equipment for schools.
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