A Proposal on Teaching Methods

A Proposal on Teaching Methods

Objectives of the Study

The study was guided by the following objectives:

1. To investigate the extent to which teachers’ academic qualifications influence performance of students in English language in junior secondary schools in  South-West, Oyo State.
2. To determine the extent to which teachers’ attitude influence performance of students in English language in public secondary schools in in  South-West, Oyo State.
3. To examine the extent to which teachers’ teaching method influence performance of students in English language in Junior  secondary schools in in  South-West, Oyo State.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Teaching Methods

According to Ayeni (2011), teaching is a continuous process that involves bringing about desirable changes in learners through use of appropriate methods. Adunola (2011) indicated that in order to bring desirable changes in students, teaching methods used by educators should be best for the subject matter. Furthermore, Bharadwaj & Pal (2011) sustained that teaching methods work effectively mainly if they suit learners’ needs since every learner interprets and responds to questions in a unique way (Chang, 2010). As such, alignment of teaching methods with students’ needs and preferred learning influence students’ academic attainments (Zeeb, 2004) Adu and Adeyanju (2013) pointed out that a teacher could have all the qualifications but could yet cause academic failure of his students if he has a poor method of teaching. The effect is that the students do not gain from the lessons. Topics of different nature will require different methods of teaching but if the teacher uses the same method all the time, then the students are unmotivated. This could also lead to truancy on the basis of “our teacher does not teach well”. If such is said of trained teachers, what then will be said of untrained teachers? Emunemu et al. (2014) emphasized in this regard that additional classroom practices, such as individualization, collaboration and authentic assessment should be put in place. Individualization means that the teacher instructs each student by drawing upon the knowledge and experience that a particular student already possesses. Collaborative learning means that teachers allow students to work together in groups, while authentic assessment refers to the fact that assessment occurs as an artifact of learning activities. All these can be accomplished, for instance, through individual and group projects that occur on an ongoing basis rather than at a single point in time.

This then suggests that this set of classroom practices if well tailored and used can produce qualitative improvement in the academic performances of all students, regardless of their background. Decisions made by teachers about classroom practices can either facilitate student learning or become an obstacle irrespective of the level of preparation students bring into the classrooms. The secondary school child is squarely within the adolescent years and it is known, or it should be known, the problems of children during this period. The child’s mind must be at peace with what goes on in the school before he can profit from it. To channel the immature minds of the adolescents to purposeful endeavors needs judicious guidance services in every secondary school. The contacts with the schools revealed that only a small percentage of them have some measure of guidance services. One says, “Some measure of guidance services” because the guidance counselor is often made to teach specific subjects. A good majority of the schools have no guidance counselors (Adu and Adeyanju 2013). One of the reasons why the services of guidance counselors are extremely necessary in the secondary school apart from psychological and emotional reasons is the inordinate ambition of some parents especially among the elite group. They compel their children to study certain subjects leading to specific careers in life even though their children are not interested in these subjects and since they are not interested they hardly do well in them. In their attempt to keep to their parents’ wish and in the absence of guidance counsellors, they end up neither learning the subjects dictated to them by their parents, nor the other subjects they were originally interested in. A few of them who prove tough and continue to work in order to fulfil the wishes of their parents may end up as broken personalities. Eventually they fail the WAEC examination in these subjects. If one has adequate guidance services in the school, the guidance counselor could even reach out the parents of such children and counsel them to avoid compelling their wards to learn specific subjects.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Research design

A descriptive survey design will be used to obtain the data that will be used to describe the existing phenomena. It will be used for exploring the existing two or more variables at one given point of time. It is the method suitable for collecting original data for the purpose of describing a population which will be too large to observe directly, (Mugenda and Mugenda, 1999).

Target population

Mugenda and Mugenda (1999) noted that target population will be a population to which the researcher wanted to generalize the results of the study. In this case the target population for this research would comprise of teachers of English and English heads of departments in both public and private schools in the area of study.

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