Teachers’ Variables and Academic Performance of Students in Biology

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1       Background to the Study

Teaching is an activity that has to do with an exhibition of certain variables of a person who is involved in it. The teacher occupies a central position upon which all other activities with the school revolve, therefore these are certain qualities expected of him to posses for effective execution of his functions. These can be related to the work of Ozigi (2015) who opined that an important sign of long range breath of a nation is the spirit and quality of its teacher and had support from the work of Derama (2016) that education is the key to national development and only teachers holds the key and can turn it for national development.

The teacher is therefore the pivot on which every educational development hangs. These in other words also means, that the future of any nation rest in the hands of its teacher’s qualities they posses today will inevitably be reflected in the citizens of tomorrow. If the variables (qualities) of the teacher is good, there is a tendency of his/her students excelling in learning. On a whole, a teacher is effective to the extent of causing learning to occur among his learner’s only when his variables are good. The teacher has to be properly educated before he/she can effectively impact knowledge into the learners for he/she cannot offer what he/she does not have.

Specification on the variables of a teacher in his context will cover three main aspects, which are the qualification of the teacher, his or her gender.

Gender of a teacher, Ekpo (2019) asserts that the longer teachers (male / female) stays in the teaching profession the more competence they become; as there would be provision for in service training for the acquisition of intellectual, technical competence, resourcefulness and class management. Therefore, in this research work, a critical examination on what teacher’s variables could do on performance of Biology Student in Oruk Anam Local Government Area is considered.

1.2       Statement of Problem

According to Waller (2015) the concept to teaching implies that, it is a set of stimuli initiated and regulated by an individual who has been professionally trained to do so.

Teaching strategies are learned and not automatically manifested by individuals. This means that before anybody is said to be a teacher, such a person must undergo a process of professional training so as to be able to acquire the needed skills for the job.

On the aspect of experience, Rengochetoe (2017) believes that experience are only available to individuals who have subjected themselves to training in order to be able to appreciate the complexities and scope of their functions. Teaching is a complex process, which involves the learners whose behaviour are to be influence to affect a behaviour change in a context; that is why the person’s sex is seen as an important factor in the profession. Most times, researchers do overlook the issue of gender as not having any time to do with the execution of the duties of professionally qualified teachers.

But in this context specification had been laid on three major aspects which are the professional qualification of the teacher and gender status of teacher as well as some of the variable processed by subject teachers in our schools and how those variables affects the performance of students in secondary school biology in Oruk Anam Local Government Area.

1.3       Purpose of the study

The purpose of this study was to examine Teachers Variables and Academic Performance of Biology Students in Secondary School in Oruk Anam Local Government Area.

In specific terms the purposes of this are:

1. i) To find out the influence of teacher qualification on students’ academic performance in Biology.
2. ii) To find out the influence of teachers’ gender on academic performance of students in Biology