Impact of Teacher Quality on the Academic Performance of Junior Secondary School Students in Social Studies in Some Selected Schools on Lagos Island
Chapter One
The Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study was to assess the influence of teacher quality on students’ performance in Lagos Island, Lagos state, Nigeria.
Objectives of the Study
- To assess how teacher qualification influence students’ performance in Lagos Island.
- To examine how demographic characteristics of teachers influences the students’ performance in Lagos Island.
- To establish how teaching experience of the classroom teacher influence student’s performance in Lagos Island.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Empirical review on teacher qualification and student’s academic performance
Education has an immense impact on the human society. It trains the human mind to think and take the right decision. Man becomes a rational animal when he is educated. It is through education that knowledge and information is received and spread throughout the world. If a person cannot read mediums and write then he is closed to all the knowledge and wisdom he can gain through books and other mediums. In other words, he is shut off from the outside. In contrast, an educated man lives in a room with all its windows open towards outside world.
The quality of human resource of a nation is easily judged by the number of literate population living in it. This is to say that education is a must if a nation aspires to achieve growth and development and more importantly sustain it. This may well explain the fact that rich and developed nations of the world have very high literacy rate and productive human resource. In fact these nations have started imparting selective training and education programs so as to meet the new technical and business demands of the 21st century http//www.globalcitezenscorps.org/node/11259.
Teacher qualification and student’s academic performance in Nigeria
In this section the study examines teacher qualification that influence students’ performance based on the research objectives.
Education has been defined as the process through which knowledge; skills, attitudes and values are imparted for the purpose of integrating the individual in a given society, or changing the values and norms of a society. For individuals, this process is life-long. It begins at birth and ends with death. The UNESCO International standard classification of education defines education as comprising organized and sustained communication designed to bring about learning (UNESCO, 1975).
Education is therefore the potential instrument of a person’s mental and moral make-up. The history of civilization bears testimony to the facts that man unlike a wild animal, has built a glorious heritage of culture, art, science, philosophy and religion. Heredity and environment are the two most important factors of growth and development. Heredity endows each individual with capacities, attitudes, and interests and it is for education to provide scope for their expansion and expression through favorable environment.
A recent article…”looked up pagead2.googlesyndication.com,(2012),” on the role of education in growth and development of child, ”said that education is responsible of promoting the right use of the bodily and intellectual inborn tools which are present to all children being a result of the teacher himself being a vital part of environment determining the destiny of individual characters.
Examination of education systems from ancient times to to-day reveals elaborate and deliberate Practices of education. There existed an elaborate education system which might have not been formal like it was the case of Western European education system, but it produced competent individual who sustained the African indigenous/traditional education systems (Sifuna and Indire, 1974). Formal education was introduced in Nigeria in the mid-nineteenth century by European Christian Missionaries (Karanja, 1995).
The urge to establish education at that time was necessitated by the unplanned, rapid expansion of the “mission” and “bush” schools (Sifuna and Indire, 1974). This development called for an equally sharp increase in the supply of teachers to work in the newly established schools. In addition, there was need to produce school teachers to relieve missionaries who were required to concentrate on missionary/evangelization work.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research Design
The study adopts descriptive study design; the researcher describes the phenomenon under investigation as it occurs in real teaching life situations. The researcher is involved in measuring of the variables responses to questions about teaching with the aim of understanding the respondent’s perception from which truism is constructed (Kothari, C.R., 1985). The intention was to check on the influence of the teacher’s quality on students’ academic performance in Junior secondary school in Nigeria: A case of Lagos Island L.G.A.
Target Population
The study area has 29 Junior secondary schools with a total of 13360 students, 29 head teachers and 116 classroom teachers who teach primary six. This gives a total target population of 13495. primary six was selected for the study.
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA ANALYSIS, PRESENTATION AND INTERPRETATION
Teacher’s gender
Table4.10 shows that 55.10% of the respondents were males while 44.90% of them were females.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, DISCUSSIONS, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Summary of findings
This section presents the key findings of the study based on the independent and dependent variables.
Teachers attitude on teaching influence on students’ academic performance
The study established that teacher’s attitude on teaching had influence on student’s performance in Nigeria.
This is true because the study revealed that 61.22% of teachers in Lagos Island zone do not fail to cover syllabuses in time but that 30.62% never covered it all. However, it was encouraging to note that majority 65.32% of teachers had concern of their students as they always prepared themselves for class by use of written lesson plans and that 85.75% of them involved their students in doing activities. Many others, 77.55% encourage their students ask questions when lessons were in progress.
Demographic characteristics of teachers influence on student’s academic performance
The study developed that demographic characteristics of teachers had influence of academic performance. The teachers in the zone have diverse drawbacks that could hinder good delivery to their students. The shortage of teachers was observed as most teachers were found to teach very many students in a class and had many lesions to teach in a day. This would lead to low production of students’ results.
Teachers qualification influence on learner’s academic performance
It was found true that teacher’s quality had influence on student’s academic performance. This was so because most, 48.98% of teachers were P1certificate holders a fact that could limit their delivery.
Teacher teaching experience influence on student’s academic performance
The findings revealed that teachers were not subjected to regular in serving as 36.73% of teachers attended seminars only once and that of 48.98% of teachers did not attend any seminar in a period of two years. This implies that teacher lack regular refresher courses to introduce them to new skills, knowledge needed in teaching due to diverse way which like to effect performance in a diverse way.
Discussions of the Study
Teacher’s attitude influence on student’s academic performance
The study shows that majority, 89.80% of the teachers attended class most frequently. This is an evidence of commitment hence an indicator of positive effective behavior. This had a likelihood of raising positive academic performance in the zone. Nevertheless many, 65.31% of the teachers did not cover syllabus in time. This behavioral attitude could imply the advance production of low academic performance. Most, 71.45% of teachers had concern of their student’s This could influence student’s academic performance.
Teachers demographic characteristics influence on student’s academic performance.
The study shows that majority 40.81% of the teachers are middle aged. They are aged between 31 years and 40 years. This demonstrates that teachers in the zone are quite potential and that they could produce results. Nevertheless many others, 20.49% are quite aged 51 years and above.
An addition, many teachers handle very large class where majority 69.39% of teachers handle more than forty students in a class.
Study also shows that most, 61.23% of teachers handle too many lessons which could diminish the teachers from producing high academic performance. This is because teachers have no time for individualized education programmes to their learners.
Teachers qualification influence on student’s academic performance
Majority 48.98% are p1 teachers and 20.415% are diploma holders. This means that most of the teachers are of form four holders. This means that more than half of teachers are of the same academic levels. This implies that majority of the teachers in the zone could be of same academic abilities and that they are likely produce students of same academic levels. This confirms it true that no student can perform behold the quality of his teacher Duyulemi and Duyilemi (2002).
Conclusions
Education is the best legacy that a nation can give to her citizens. This is so because education impacts knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to an individual learner. These values would make an individual more useful to the society. It is also a common believe that education determines the society social economical development.
The role of teachers is to educate learners. This implies that the development of any nation is on the hand of teachers because they are the dispersers of education to the learners. The influence of teacher’s characteristics on student’s academic performance is therefore a key determinant to any development in the society and the nation at large. The study revealed that teachers attitude on teaching played a big role in determining the student’s academic performance. The failure to cover syllabus is a behavioral attitude and could to low academic performance. The large numbers of students handled by teachers could also prevent individual education programme being implemented to all learners.
Nevertheless, the teachers qualifications and experiences and no clear prove on it influence on student’s academic performance.
Recommendations
It is important to note that school is an important social institution that determines the destiny of learners. This cannot be so without teachers. The following recommendations were therefore arrived at:
- Government should increase the number of teachers to reduce the teacher student ratio thus enabling individual education programmes being taken to all
- The relevant bodies of education stake holder should device the correct way of monitoring and evaluating curriculum implementation in all schools to ensure complete syllabus coverage
- Forum of stakeholders should be created to check provision of education resources and care for the
- The government should review its free secondary fund allocation to allow regular in servicing of teachers. This would equip teachers with new knowledge and skills required in teaching.
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