Factors Responsible for Low Enrollment of Students in Chemistry Education in Colleges of Education
CHAPTER ONE
Objective of the Study
- To discuss the low enrollment of students in chemistry education in colleges of education
- Investigate the immediate and remote causes of the low enrollment
- Prescribe possible solutions to arrest the ugly situation of low enrollments in chemistry.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF THE RELEVANT LITERATURE
Science education in Nigeria
Science education in Nigerian schools has been facing lots of challenges since the country independence. The problems in science education are not peculiar to Nigeria but a global issue. Research studies indicate that there is a shortage of qualified teachers to teach many of the science subjects in schools around the world (Forni, 2007; Subair and Talabi, 2015; Aragon, 2016). Science teachers feel overwhelmed by the expectations and scope of the job and isolated and unsupported in their classrooms (Mangrubang, 2005). In developing countries like Nigeria, science teachers have high status but remuneration is very poorly, and science teaching is no longer the career of the first choice (Adesoji, 2018). There is a lack of motivation for the teachers. How employees perform depends on the extent of motivation he or she received as an individual to work upon required tasks to meet the goals (Panjwani, 2018). Motivation can be a driving force within a human organism that move or make individual wanting to channels his behavour towards the achievement of an organizational goal (Abdullahi and Jimoh, 2018).
Ingersoll and Perda (2009) observed the shortage of mathematics and science teacher even in the developed nation like the USA. Lack of qualified science teachers remains one of the problems of science learning in Nigeria (Omorogbe and Ewansiha, 2013; Osuolale, 2014). This shortage had resulted in another problem of out-of-field teaching. Out-of-field is when a teacher teaches subjects or year levels without having the appropriate qualifications (Du Plessis et al., 2013). Out-of-field teaching is a global problem in all subjects according to Caldis (2017) research indicates this problem in teaching geography in Australia. According to Du Plessis et al. (2017) effective educational leadership has an influence when teachers are assigns to a position for which they are not suitably qualified. Most of the out-of-field teachers would also have the problem of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK).
PCK is a characteristic of teacher knowledge of how subject matter should be interpreted (Koh et al., 2010). Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is a critical component of teacher competence that affects student progress (Kleickmann et al., 2013). Additionally, they have low teacher self-efficacy. The teachers who believed not in their abilities to teach science and have doubts about students’ abilities to learn science may result in avoiding their science instruction at all possible mean (Koc and Yager, 2016). Both the PCK and the self-efficacy are critical educational constructs that determine teacher effectiveness.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research Design
This is a descriptive survey research design in which the factors responsible for low enrolment of students in Chemistry education in college of education in the South East were explored. The research design is quite modest, and was used to effectively investigate and explain why the undesirable situation of chemistry abandonment exists in the Nigerian schools system. According to Nkpa (1997):
Descriptive studies make no attempt to manipulate variables. Their concern is to either describe and interpret existing relationships, attitudes, practices, processes and trends, or compare variables.
Thus all that one was required to do under this design was to collate respondents’ opinions, add data from the school authorities and education boards, analyze them, and then identify and publish the observed causes of low enrollment of chemistry in Nigerian schools. The data were extracted from the research instruments, standardized and used to reach the conclusions. Some other relevant data were obtained from the Statistics Divisions of the State Secondary Education Boards (SEBs), the principals or other top officials of the secondary schools in the selected schools for research, science teachers in such schools and their SS 2 students.
Population of the Study
The target population was four states of Abia, Anambra, Enugu and Imo States in the South East zone of the Nigeria. A local government area (LGA) was randomly chosen from each state, and three schools were chosen from each LGA (i.e. each state) by stratified random sampling. Thus a total of four colleges of education were selected. The total number of students in the selected schools was eleven thousand, seven hundred and eighteen (11,718), and the total number of science teachers in them was one hundred and thirty two (132) (See Table 3). These formed the study population.
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS PRESENTATION
Research Question 1
Answers to RQ 1 were obtainable from questionnaire items SQ 5(b), 6, 7(a), 8, 11, 12 and TQ 6. For SQ 5(b), 706 students or 80% preferred biology to chemistry by making biology either their first or second choice in the list. Reasons for such a choice (including for those who preferred chemistry – 19%) were analyzed under SQ 6 in Table 4. The factors that influenced the students’ choice of subjects, apart from parental factors, were analyzed under SQ 7(a) in the table. For item SQ 8, a total of 662 or 75% of the respondents indicated that biology lessons were both interesting and easy to understand; 132 respondents or 15% indicated that chemistry lessons were both interesting and easy to understand, while another 176 or 20% were of the opinion that chemistry lessons were interesting but difficult to understand. Thus a total of 311 students or 35% indicated that they liked chemistry lessons, though with varied cognitive perceptions.
CHAPTER FIVE
RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION
Recommendations
Students should start early in life to develop interest in chemistry as a subject. This will make the subject easy for them when they now choose it as one of their subjects at school. Moreover, they should realize that the extra effort they may put in order to understand and pass chemistry is a credit to both themselves and the nation. To make such efforts concrete, students should develop more interest in their mathematics lessons and make every effort to know it and also pass it well. Then they would have a comparative advantage over their mates and be happy with their subject choices then and after.
Parents should arrange extra lessons for their children in the sciences, particularly in such areas as mathematics and chemistry which they find somewhat difficult. Where they can afford it, parents should also provide some gadgets and instruments like computers, science films, science novels, and simple apparatus which will help to broaden the view, awareness and knowledge of the children in the core sciences and mathematics. Verbal encouragement and guidance, even in the absence of everything else, will also help tremendously to put the children in the right track regarding their careers. If disposed enough, the parents should from time to time teach the children by themselves, or at least discuss their problems in their subjects with them.
The teachers on their part should cease to stick to strictly orthodox ways of teaching as it concerns the sciences, particularly chemistry and mathematics. Less formal approaches should be adopted in order to first and foremost impart a positive attitude and friendly posture on their pupils in relation to themselves and their subjects. Sacrifice is also required, as chemistry teachers could make out extra time for additional teaching, problem solving or laboratory demonstrations, so that the students would be ‘at home’ with their course. The usual ‘master-servant’ and ‘pontius pilate’ posture of science teachers in their official relationship with their students worsens the students’ regard to the course.
School principals and heads of science departments, though operating on tight budget, could still do a lot to tilt the interest of their students towards chemistry. They could liaise with the teachers to improvise some unaffordable apparatus, or borrow from sister schools. Commendation of teachers’ efforts and fruitful dialogs on their problems will also help in bringing out the best out of the teachers. Principals should not hesitate to nominate and sponsor their chemistry staff for training and re-training, and for participation in science workshops, exhibitions, book-fairs and excursions. Benefits and emoluments accruing to the teachers should not be delayed or withheld for any reason. If these steps are taken, the morale of the teachers would be high enough to bring out the best out of them and attract others to the profession.
The educational authorities have the greatest role to play in remedying the ugly situation. To start with, they should mount up campaigns on the media, schools and communities to enlighten people on the importance of the sciences, particularly chemistry, and urge them to encourage their wards to do them for obvious benefits they hold, not only for them but for society in general. The science laboratories should be adequately equipped and training programmes scheduled for the science teachers and laboratory technicians, so that effective use would be made of provided equipment. Well-informed science supervisors should also be sent to schools from time to time to assess the progress of work in the sciences and hold fruitful discussions with both the school authorities and the science teachers themselves. Annual budgets at all levels of governance should make specific and adequate provisions for science enlightenment and expansion of scientific culture in our schools, and the funds disbursed timely and accordingly. Science teachers’ allowances should be raised across the board, and the general conditions of service of chemistry teachers in particular enhanced so that those in service would remain, and more students would be encouraged to take up the profession as they leave school.
CONCLUSION
Researches of this nature are very helpful to both the educational communities and the society in general. It is therefore suggested that school and university authorities, as well as governments at all levels, take part in funding such research. Respondents for oral or questionnaire interviews should oblige without hesitation, and needed data from which ever sector should readily be made available to the researcher to ease his ‘bottlenecks’. On a last note, governments, at both state and federal levels, are urged to study this document and take appropriate actions to ameliorate the ugly situation.
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