Difference Between Teaching Qualification And Students’ Academic Performance In Government

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1   Background to the Study

There is growing interest in the professional development of educators as the demands, ex-pectations, and requirements of teacher educa- tion increasingly come under scrutiny (Louhran 2014). What the teacher does, influences, the whole process of learning. Effective teacher produces better performing students (Akiri 2013). Van den Bergh and Roos (2014) maintained that professional development of teachers can be effective and sustainable, if certain conditions are met (Curwood 2014). Besides, the analysis of Van den Bergh and Roos (2014) suggested that the implementation of educational reforms, including reforms associated with technology integration and literacy education, is often de- pendent upon teachers’ skills, values, and cul- tural models. While hiring of qualified teachers is encouraged for improvement of academic per- formance, theories from the study of Firestone (2014) caution that policies to remove ineffec- tive teachers should not reduce autonomy or trust among effective teachers and that evalua- tions should provide teachers with useful feed- back and policy makers with information on the conditions that facilitate good teaching.

A teacher is a person who provides schooling for others. Teacher is he who facilitates education for an individual student he may also be described as a personal tutor. According to W. Louder, 1991, the teacher is the ultimate key to educational change and school improvement. Furthermore, the restructuring of schools, the composition of national and provincial curricula and the development of benchmark assessments are of little values if they do not take the teacher into consideration. A teacher doesn’t deliver the curriculum, but he develops, define and re-interpret the curriculum. It is what teachers think, believe and do at the level of classroom that ultimately shapes the kind of learning that young people get. Therefore, appreciation of this fact is placing working with teachers and understanding teaching at the top of our research. There are three schools of thoughts who have described a teacher as someone who consciously and deliberately shows others how to do things. With this definition, we can say that anybody who occupies a leadership position in any sphere of the society is a teacher. This includes those who are not paid to teach in school like religious schools and parents. The second school of thought looks at a teacher as someone who imparts ideas, knowledge and skills in an organized classroom. There they mean a teacher is just anybody who can handle chalk and stand before the learners and pour facts for the learners to copy into their notes. This group includes untrained teachers, half bated teachers and trained teachers. While the third school of thought views the teacher as “someone who is professionally qualified to impart knowledge and stimulate learning formally in a classroom situation”. Here a teacher is someone grounded in his subject area and must necessarily posses‟ basic teaching qualification, which enables him to be appointed to teach in institutions of learning. This group includes trained teachers, tutors, instructor and lecturers who are paid to teach in our institutions of learning. Teachers Registration Council (TRC) [2002] defines a teacher as a person who had undergone approved Professional training in education at appropriate levels capable of imparting knowledge, attitudes and skills to the learner”.

The Nigeria Union of Teachers NUT (1994) defined a teacher as a person who has the registrable professional qualification which enables him to be appointed to teach at any appropriate level of recognized education in any nation and who is of sound mind and is mentally alert. The word, ‘teach’ is sometimes synonymously used with such terms as impart, inspire, facilitate, guide, influence, organize, coordinate, disseminate, inform, direct, instruct, educate or counsel. Teacher has been respected, revered and loved by the society because of the unconditional services he rendered to humanity. Teachers have been associated with certain virtues and characters which make them more responsible to the society. This includes honesty, kindness, faithfulness, diligence, endurance, rehabilitee, good judgment, self control, adaptability, and intelligence and trust worthiness. The teacher, through leadership by example imparts these good character traits to students. Thus, apart from academic training the teacher facilitates, moral training of learners.

1.2 Statement of Problem

Over the years, students’ achievement in social studies has prompted educational researchers to continuously make relentless efforts at identifying mitigating factors that might account for the observed poor performance. Some research studies suggest that factors inside and outside the classroom affect students’ achievement and interest. Among other variables identified are: Students’ poor study habit, low self-esteem, teacher factors (teacher quality), shortage of qualified teachers, inadequate teaching facilities in Schools, home factor, school environmental factors and many others. Despite their efforts, students continue to exhibit poor performance in the subject. In this vein, teacher factor has been linked to be one of the causes of students’ poor performance, in this sense there is need to look into the qualification of teachers in our schools because effective teaching elicit effective learning. Teacher is the principal initiator of learning. Therefore, this study is designed to survey the difference between teaching qualification and students’ academic performance in Government in secondary schools in Ikono Local Government Area.

Originally posted on March 3, 2021 @ 2:52 pm