Relationship Between Some Teachers’ Variables and Students’ Academic Performance in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area
Chapter One
Purpose of the Study
Educational services facilitate the implementation of educational policy, the attainment of policy goals, and the promotion of effectiveness in the educational system (FRN, 2004). The main purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship among educational services, teacher variables, and student’s academic performance in public senior secondary schools, Obio-Akpor local government area
Specifically, the purpose of the study is to:
- determine the influence of teacher variables on students’ academic performance;
- determine the extent to which supervision of instruction influences teaching and learning;
- find out the level of students’ academic performance in public senior secondary schools, Obio-okpo local government area
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE
Concept of Teacher variables
According to the Lexicon Webster’s dictionary (1997), quality is a grade, a degree of excellence, especially a high degree of goodness or worth. Therefore quality can be said to be an agreed level of goods and services. Muriel (1995) opined that quality concept is based on the premise that people will take a greater interest in and improve the productivity of their work if they can become more involved in the decision-making process. In this way the workers improve both their self-image and their working environment. In the same vein, Oakland (1999) posited that “quality is the totality of features and characteristics of a product of service that bear on its ability to satisfy wardd or implied needs”. Quality can then be said to mark a level of acceptance or satisfied excellence of teaching/learning process in the school. Ejiofor and Aniagoh (1994) explained that “the quality of personnel determines the products and services they render; no organization can rise above the quality of its staff; without personnel, all other factors of production will remain in their natural untapped ward”.
It is therefore imperative that all products and services should possess a high quality in order to appease the would-be customers (learners), stand the test of time and also produce the expected results. Like personnel in other fields of human endeavour, teachers in schools who are at the center of learning are equally expected to possess the desirable personal and professional qualities that will enable them perform well and achieve the aims and objectives of education as spelt out in the National Policy on Education. Since education has been identified as one of the important keys that unlock the door of success in life, it therefore implies that the teacher is the person that holds the key to modernization. He can also be described as a person that imparts knowledge, a director of learning, an instructor, a disciplinarian, a pace-setter, an evaluator and a judge (Abdulkareem, 1989).
According to John (1993), “teacher education in .ia is conditioned by historical and social factors”. Like in most countries of the world, the provision of adequate facilities and finance for teacher education has lagged behind the provision of similar inputs in other fields of education. The issue of supply and demand of teachers, according to John (1993), wardd that next to students, teachers are the largest, most extensive and crucial inputs of an educational system. In the light of this, there should be production of high quality teachers who have good academic knowledge of their subject disciplines and who possess professional skills, experience, administrative responsibility, attitudes and values as well as personal qualities for effective teaching.
It is believed that the more experienced a teacher is the more productive he will be in his teaching and the more likely his students will perform more brilliantly academically in school examinations than those students taught by an inexperienced teacher. Oakland (1999) opined that “the success of any educational enterprise depends solely upon the quality of teachers employed to run the instructional programmes in the school system”. Their duties and functions which determine their quality vary widely. It is also of importance to note that their functions dictate the size, rules, policies and the general organization of their institutions. No wonder the Federal Government decided that teachers’ education be given a major emphasis in all educational planning because “no education system can rise above the quality of its teachers” (FRN 2004).
In the same vein, Obanya (1993) opined that like the case in any other area of human activity, a teacher should have both natural and acquired characteristics to be able to perform satisfactorily. Natural qualities are traits which the typical teacher is born with, while acquired characteristics are, in addition to natural traits, those that come through learning. The teacher needs to develop his human and academic qualities which will make him/her a better teacher, such as personality qualities, physical energy, perseverance, responsibility, initiative, self-control, decisiveness, humour, sincerity, loyalty, leadership and academic qualities.
Academic ability includes intelligence, subject-matter knowledge, knowledge of teaching and learning, teaching experience and certification status and vigour to carry out research. Supporting the above assertion, Majasan (1995) stressed that a teacher is expected to have the following qualities for effective teaching and learning to take place: Initiative, patience, sympathy, respect, flexibility, honesty, foresight, intellectual curiousity and keenness. These are the qualities normal and special that a teacher requires meeting for the classroom performances in order to produce the well integrated individual capable of playing significant roles in the school setting.
Darling-Hammond and Hudson, (1988) buttressed the above wardment further when they wardd that “one way to measure the quality of teachers is to look at their certification, teaching experience, academic responsibility and attitudes towards teaching”. Teaching quality is determined by the teacher’s overall performance as well as teaching practices. The quality of education of any nation to a very large extent determines the development status of the particular nation. Education can be regarded as the heartbeat of any nation. As a man nourishes his heart to be alive, a nation must also cater for her educational system in order to keep it alive technologically, economically, politically and socially and to also ensure quality products (graduates). The .ian Philosophy of Education and the National Educational goals implicitly aim at the production of quality graduates (FRN, 2004). The attainment of these goals can only be realized by providing quality instruction for students.
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CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHOD
This study investigated the relationship among teacher variables and Students’ academic performance in the Obio-okpo local government area of .ia. This chapter described the procedure used in conducting the study.
Research Design
The correlational survey design was used but it was conducted ex- post facto. This was because the data were collected after the event had taken place, hence the name ex-post facto (Nworgu, 1991). It x-rayed the relationship among teacher variables and students’ academic performance in Obio-okpo local government area secondary schools. It was ex- post facto because results of secondary school students in the sampled schools for the year 2003/2004, 2004/2005, 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 were collected from the schools for the trends of academic performance of the students.
Research Questions
This study answered the following research questions:
- What is the percentage of the teachers by academic qualification?
- What percentage of the teachers are professionally-qualified?
- What is the distribution of the principal by years of teaching experience?
- What percentage of the teachers arecomputer-literate?
- What is the level of students’ academic performance from 2004 to 2008 in public senior secondary schools, Obio-okpo local government area?
Sample and Sampling Techniques
The population consisted of all public senior secondary schools in the Obio-akpo local government area. There were 9 public senior secondary schools in the four selected wards as at the time of this study and the schools were stratified into wards.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS OF DATA AND DISCUSSION
In this chapter, the data collected and analysed were presented in tabular form. Descriptive analysis was used to analyse the research questions raised in the study.
Descriptive Statistics
Tables 4-11 provided answers to the research questions earlier ward, one after the other; while figures 3 and 4 presented the graphical illustration of the answers.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Conclusion
The ultimate conclusion is that the provision of educational services for teachers in public senior secondary schools, Obio-okpo local government area, was grossly inadequate. It is very clear that the teacher variables would have improved if the situation were different. Lack of these essential services had contributed immensely to teachers’ poor performance and hence students’ consistent failures in their examinations.
Recommendations
On the basis of the findings of this study, the following recommendations were made:
- Periodic review of remuneration of teachers should be given top priority but it must be based on teachers’ and students’ performance.
- The curriculum of teacher education programme should also be reviewed to include computer theory and
- Secondary school teachers should enroll for computer training so as to meet with modern trends in teacher
- Only graduates with teaching qualification should be employed to teach in the senior secondary
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