Journal of Educational Research in Developing Areas
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Socioeconomic status on academic performance among pre-service teachers of Kano state college of education and preliminary studies, Kano, Nigeria
Get PDFIntroduction: Education is a powerful and uncontrolled cornerstone that a nation can build towards the creation of responsible citizens, particularly young people for the future.
Purpose: It is therefore very important for this study to be conducted among them in order to find out that their parents’ socioeconomic status have a positive or negative effect on their academic performance.
Methodology: The study adopted an ex post-facto form of research design. The target sample for this study consisted of 120 second year pre-service teachers selected using simple random sampling from three units of the School of General Education. Descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation were used and t-test (Independent sample) was used to test hypotheses at 0.05 alpha level of significance. It was analyzed after the data was collected.
Results: The results of the study showed that students with a high socio-economic status had a high academic output compared to students with a middle socio-economic status. On the other hand, there was also a significant difference between middle and low socio-economic status students in terms of their academic success.
Recommendations: Government should also provide ample reading resources and a driving learning environment for less privileged pre-service teachers so that they can also compete favorably with their peers with higher socio-economic status
Task-oriented leadership style on students’ academic achievement in public secondary schools in Nyeri county, Kenya
Get PDFIntroduction: The concept of school leadership has attracted the attention of many stakeholders in education sector. Students’ academic achievement is greatly determined by the decisions made by the school governance. The leadership style used by leaders influences the decision making process, communication process and implementation of decisions made.
Purpose: The study sought to find out the extent to which task-oriented leadership style used by school heads in public secondary schools in Nyeri Central Sub-County affects students’ academic achievement.
Methodology: The study used descriptive research design to obtain accurate information concerning the current existing phenomena. The sample consisted 590 statistically sampled using Krejcie’s and Morgan’s table of sampling. Data was collected using structured questionnaires and interview schedules. After pilot study, the researcher checked validity and reliability of the tools. The reliability value of the tool was 0.8. To enhance consistency of the tool, test-retest reliability technique was used and yielded a coefficient of 0.76. Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient was used to determine the relationship between task-oriented leadership style and students’ academic achievement.
Results: The study found that principals who practiced task-oriented leadership style posted high mean mark in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE). The study also revealed that majority of principals practiced relationship-oriented leadership style hence, it was the most prevalent leadership style in Nyeri Central Sub-County. The study found a strong positive correlation between task-oriented leadership style and students’ achievement.
Recommendations: It is recommended that principals’ should incorporate different leadership styles depending on the situation at hand to promote high students achievement
Principals’ transformational leadership practices on teachers’ job satisfaction and commitments in Abia state, Nigeria
Get PDFIntroduction: Principals are expected to exhibit the appropriate leadership skills to attract teachers to maximize input, which might be expressed in the commitment of teachers to their duties and student achievement. Principals with transformational leadership skills have the ability to create job satisfaction and also encourage teachers to be more committed to their duties.
Purpose: The study investigated the effects of transformational leadership practices of principals on the satisfaction and commitments of teachers in Abia state. The four basic elements of transformational leadership which includes; idealized influence of leaders, inspirational motivation& ability to inspire confidence, intellectual stimulation & creativity and individual consideration of group members were looked into.
Design: The study population consisted of 5,047 teachers and 242 principals of both rural and urban government secondary schools in Abia State. A stratified random sampling method was used at a 30% rate to obtained 73 principals and 1,514 teachers, respectively, totaling 1,587 respondents. The instrument used for the study was a questionnaire designed by the researcher titled ‘Principal’s Transformational Leadership Practices on Teacher Job Satisfaction and Commitments Questionnaire' (PTLPTJSCQ).
The questionnaire was administered to teachers and principals in the selected public secondary schools in Abia State. The face validity of the instrument was carried out by two experts in the field.The reliability coefficient obtained was 0.88, and this was determined by applying test-retest reliability and Pearson’s product moment correlation.Mean scores were used to answer research questions, while aggregate mean scores were used to make the final decision.
Results: Findings from the studyrevealed that principal’s transformational leadership practices have a positive effect on teacher’s job satisfaction and commitments in Abia State.
Recommendations: It was recommended that Education Ministries and Boards should establish and implement programmes such as seminars, workshops and so on to develop transformational leadership skills among school principals, among others
Empirical reviews of career plateauing and turnover intentions of teachers’ experience to pursue further studies in Kenya
Get PDFPURPOSE: The purpose of this paper was to review the various studies on the relationship between career plateauing, turnover intentions and teacher decisions in order to pursue further studies.
METHODS: The empirical study focused on the forms of career plateauing faced by teachers, the relationship between career plateauing and turnover intentions, the relationship between turnover intentions and teacher preparation, the history characteristics of career plateauing and turnover, and techniques to enrich the quality of teacher work to fight career plateauing. Two forms of career stagnation were described in the review: structural (hierarchical) plateauing and content (job content) plateauing.
RESULTS: The analysis of the studies has shown that previous researchers have studied the influence of career plateauing on organizational variables such as turnover intentions, work satisfaction and organizational engagement. Previous studies have shown that work plateauing has been negatively associated with job satisfaction and organizational engagement and positively correlated with turnover intentions. The reviewed literature also found that there are a variety of techniques that can be used to improve the job content of teachers to address the career plateau.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The review tried to define the type of plateauing that Kenyan teachers often face. While the reviews have shown that career plateauing is becoming increasingly widespread in various organizations, there has been little research in Kenya especially among secondary school teachers. The study therefore recommended that studies be undertaken to determine the relationship between career graduation, turnover intentions and the decision of the instructor to undertake post-graduate studies in Kenya
Communities’ violence and psychosocial problems on unified public examination performance of senior secondary school students in Kano metropolis, Nigeria
Get PDFIntroduction: Stakeholders are concerned with dismal academic performance in examination organized by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and the National Examination Council (NECO). Results released by these examination bodies have been poor over a period of time.
Purpose: The purpose of the study is to examine the influence of community violence and psychosocial problems on the academic performance of senior secondary school students in Kano metropolis.
Methodology: A survey research design was adopted for this study. A sample of 363 senior secondary school students from 10 Government senior secondary schools in Kano metropolis were selected. Data were obtained using three research instruments (ESACOV, UCLA Reaction Index and MEATS) with reliability co-efficient of 0.74, 0.72 respectively. Analysis of data was by the use of percentages, frequency counts to answer the research questions as t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to test the hypotheses.
Results: Results obtained showed that students exposed to community violence manifest some psychosocial problems which include depression, feeling of insecurity, loss of memory etc. The post-traumatic stress disorder exhibited by students exposed to community violence include displacement, bereavement, separation, involvement in hostilities among other males and female students exposed to community violence were found to differ in academic performance.
Recommendations: It was recommended among other things that extra efforts need to be made by teachers to help students exposed to community violence to improve on their academic performance. The study concluded that there is a significant relationship between psychosocial problems and academic performance of students exposed to community violence
Enrolment patterns in federal universities based on three criteria (2010-2031): A time series approach
Get PDFIntroduction: There is a general agreement among previous studies that gender, merit and catchment area criteria allows for access to university education, but the pattern of these variables over the years has not been proven in these studies.
Purpose: This study used a times series approach to evaluate the enrolment patterns in federally owned universities in South-South Zone, Nigeria, based on the gender, merit and catchment area criteria.
Methodology: The descriptive survey design was adopted for this study. A purposive sampling technique was adopted to choose three universities based on the generation of their establishment. The evaluation covered from 2010 to 2019 using stationary time-bound data collected from the academic planning units of the institutions through a checklist. Future enrolment forecasts were made to 2031 using the moving average forecasting technique.
Results: A gender-based difference in enrolment, in favour of males was recorded between 2010 and 2019; there were notable fluctuations in the enrolment pattern based on the merit criterion from 2010 to 2019; the enrolment pattern in terms of the catchment area criterion was consistent from 2010 – 2019. In terms of the projection, it was predicted that enrolment at the aggregate level would rise continuously across federal universities, but not at the institutional level. more women than men are expected to be enrolled in academic programmes at federal institutions, while at the institutional level, gender-based enrolment can fluctuate.
Recommendations/Classroom Implications: Based on these findings, implications are discussed for future enrolment decisions at both the institutional and national levels
Principals’ management practices and organizational effectiveness of teachers in public secondary schools: A quantitative assessment
Get PDFIntroduction: Past studies have assessed widely the teachers' involvement in school-based decision-making. However, some studies have associated it with subject choices and teacher variables.
Purpose: The thrust of this study was to determine the relationship between management practices and organizational effectiveness of teachers in public secondary schools.
Methodology: The research was conducted in Calabar South Local Government Area of Cross River State, Nigeria. To give direction to this study, three hypotheses arising from the three specific purposes of the study were formulated. The correlation research design was adopted in this study. The study conducted a census on the entire population of 431 public secondary school teachers. The instrument for data collection was titled “Management Practices and Organizational Effectiveness of Teachers Questionnaire (MPOETQ)”. The null hypotheses formulated for the study were tested at the .05 level of significance using Pearson Product Moment Correlation.
Results: It was found that principals' communication, motivation and participatory decision-making practices had a significant and positive relationship with the organizational effectiveness of teachers in terms of punctuality, completion of scheme of work/diary, preparation of lesson plans, classroom management, lesson delivery, assessment of students, administration of examinations, involvement in PTA, involvement in extra-curricular activities and preparation/issuance of terminal results to students respectively.
Recommendations/Classroom Implications: Based on these findings, it was recommended that school principals, as well as the government, should ensure that there is an effective display of situational management practices where a situation in the school system should warrant the application of management practice that suits such a situation
Accreditation of early childhood education programmes in Nigerian higher institutions: Between policy formulation and reality
Get PDFIntroduction: Accreditation is the process of certifying academic programmes in institutions of learning. It often involves the comparison of statutory provisions and the reality, sadly in Nigeria, the provision of the statutory documents as regards accreditation is largely at variance with the results of accreditation exercises carried out by the regulatory bodies in charge of accreditation. However, the magical means through which most higher learning academic institutions gain accreditation leaves much to be desired.
Purpose: This paper therefore attempted an examination of the provisions of statutory documents as regards accreditation, comparing the provisions of the NUC’s BMAS; NCCE’s minimum standard and accreditation toolkit with the results of the needs committee set up to do on the spot assessment of the Universities on one hand and the NUC’s accreditation results published recently on the other hand.
Methods: A short survey was conducted to answer fifteen questions, related to such listed as requirements for accreditation of Early Childhood Education in Colleges of Education. Heads of Departments or their lieutenants, in the Colleges, were asked to fill out the answers to the questions using the Google form platform. The convenience sampling technique was used to select ten public owned colleges of education five-each from the southern and northern parts of Nigeria out of a total of seventy five public owned colleges of education.
Results: It was discovered that the accreditation results of the various colleges of education and universities offering early childhood educationmay not be said to be fully a reflection of reality on ground in these colleges of education and universities.
Conclusion: This paper therefore postulated based on available information that the accreditation results often published or announcedmay be at variance with the reality in those schools. Academics and other players in the subsector may be culpable alongside the accreditation bodies, at giving non accurate accounts of the true situation of things during the accreditation of programmes, early childhood education inclusive
Teachers’ pedagogical knowledge in integration of information communication technology and students’ performance in mathematics in public secondary schools in Makueni county, Kenya
Get PDFIntroduction: In many nations, the use of information and communication technology (ICTs) in and for education is increasingly growing, and it is now widely recognized as both a need and an incentive to develop and improve the education provided to people around the world.
Purpose: The intend of this study was to establish the relationship between teachers’ pedagogical knowledge in ICT integration and students’ performance in Mathematics in public secondary schools in Makueni County, Kenya.
Methodology: The study used a correlation research design. The target population was 251 principals, 407 mathematics teachers, and 14,752 Form three students, giving a total of 15,410 respondents. The study sample consisted of 25 principals, 42 mathematics teachers, and 375 students. The researcher used questionnaires for mathematics teachers, interview schedules for principals, and focus group discussions for students. Cronbach’s alpha was used to determine the reliability of the questionnaire, giving a correlation coefficient of 0.939. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, while qualitative data were categorized into themes and thematically analyzed.
Results: The findings revealed a significant relationship between teachers’ pedagogical knowledge in ICT integration and students’ performance in Mathematics.
Recommendations: The study recommends that mathematics teachers should choose appropriate technologies to incorporate in their teaching methodologies in the actual classroom to enrich what they teach, how they teach, and what students learn
Analysis of praxis of African communalism: A model of ethical values in primary school curriculum in Kenya
Get PDFIntroduction: The importance of value education in character development and the inculcation of values attitudes among children cannot be overemphasized. In the recent past, there has been an increase in cases of unethical conduct among primary school going children in Kenya and those who have graduated from this important segment of education.
Purpose: This research sought to examine the practice of African communalism as a value-based education strategy to improve ethical values in the primary school curriculum in Kenya.
Methodology:Since this is a philosophical study, conceptual analysis was adopted as the research methodology. Conceptual analysis entails breaking down and clarifies meanings and boundaries of concepts to promote understanding.
Results: The study found that the principles of African communalism have not been fully integrated in the Kenyan curriculum despite the efforts of policy makers to localize the curriculum. Integration of African communalist principles in the primary school education curriculum envisages the inculcation of the ethics of responsibility, citizenship, fairness, transparency and participation which are essential in enhancing ethical values.
Recommendations: The study recommended the integration of the principles of African communalism into the curriculum so as enhance the teaching of value education from an African perspective thus reducing the influence of Western epistemologies