Teachers Variables and Teaching Effectiveness in Home Economics

TEACHER’S VARIABLES AND TEACHING EFFECTIVENESS IN HOME ECONOMICS

 

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1     Background to the Study

Teachers’ variables constitute those factors which affect teacher’s teaching effectiveness. Those factors include: teacher’s teaching experience, gender, and certification and licensing status etc. Effective teachers are best identified by their performance. Despite common perceptions, effective teachers cannot reliably be identified based on where they went to school. The best way to access teachers’ effectiveness is to look at their job performance including what they do in classroom and how much progress their students make on achievement test.

Quality teachers are considered to be those who bring about student learning (Harris and Sass 2016). The policy issue at the heart of this work relates to the need to ensure the presence of “highly qualified teachers in every classroom” and to determine how best to define and prepare these “qualified” teachers. Quality teachers are seen simply as :good” teacher and are considered to be those who exhibit desirable traits and uphold the standards and norms of the profession. But quality teachers are also considered to be those who bring about “student learning”. These teachers are called “effective” (Berliner 2015). Fenstermacher and Richardson (cited in Berliner, 2015) distinguish between good teaching and successful teaching as follows:

By good teaching we mean that the content taught accords with disciplinary standards of adequacy and completeness and the methods employed are age appropriate, morally defensible and undertaken with the intension of enhancing the learner’s competence with respect to content. By successful teaching we mean that the learner actually acquire some reasonable and acceptable level of proficiency from what the teacher is engaged in teaching.

Because of psychometric difficulties in assessing teachers by their normative attributes, the logical, the psychological and (especially) the ethical, which are defined differently across cultures (Alexander, 2000), the tendency to evaluate teacher qualities on the basis of student performance is given even greater emphasis. With the increased demands for accountability in line with performance standards and with the growing demand for evidence-based policy making, student achievement is considered an accurate measure of teacher effectiveness and has become a basis for value-added teacher assessment systems (Braun, 2015).

These notions have also found favor in regard to the effectiveness of teacher education systems. After tracing the development and reform of teacher education in terms of the major questions shaping this field of education, Cochran-Smith (2011) argues that the outcome questions shaping is what currently motivates teacher education research and policy making. She set down three ways in which the outcomes of teacher education are constructed. One of them, long-term impact outcomes, refers to the relationships between teachers score on tests and examination, their years of experience, the extent of their preparation in subject matter and in pedagogy, what qualifications they hold in their area of expertise and their ongoing professional development.

 

Teachers Variables and Teaching Effectiveness in Home Economics

1.2     Statement of the Problem

This study sought to examine the impact of teacher’s qualification and experience on students’ performance in secondary school in Uyo Local Government Area. It has been observed statistically that there is a significant difference between performance of students taught home economics by professional and experienced teachers according to (Harris and Sass, 2016). It had also been observed that teachers who were not qualified through certifications were allowed to teach in secondary schools.

Add to that teacher who had little or no teaching experience were allowed to teach. This was reflected on the poor academic performance of students. This study therefore seeks to bridge the gap between the non-professionals and unqualified teachers. The study will also analyze in details the positive effect of teachers’ qualification and teaching experience on students’ academic performance in secondary schools in Uyo Local Government Area.

 

1.3     Purpose of the Study

This study was design to determine the influence of teacher’s variables and teaching effectiveness in Home Economics in Uyo Local Government Area. Specifically the study was designed;

• To investigate whether the qualification of a teacher could have an effect on teaching effectiveness in Home Economics.
• The years of teaching experience of the teacher of Home Economics does not significantly influence the teaching effectiveness of the teacher in the subject.

1.4     Research Questions

The following research questions guided the study

• How does the qualification of teachers influence the teaching effectiveness in Home Economics?
• To what extent does the year of experience of the Home Economics teachers influence the performance of his/her students?

Teachers Variables and Teaching Effectiveness in Home Economics

1.5     Research Hypotheses

1. There is no significant relationship between teachers’ years of teaching experience and their teaching effectiveness in Home Economics.
2. There is no significant relationship between academic qualifications and their teaching effectiveness in Home Economics.

 

1.6     Limitation and Delimitation of the Study

Limitation faced during the study were that of duration as only the semester was not much to cover many areas concerning the study.Financial limitation could not be overlooked as every step in the work need money. Reference materials related to the study was another aspect of limitation the researcher faced in the course of this study.

Delimitation:This study is delimited in scope to all students and teachers of Home Economics at the secondary school level of education in Uyo Local Government Area.

Teachers Variables and Teaching Effectiveness in Home Economics

1.7     Operational Definition of Terms

Teacher: A teacher (also called a school teacher or, in some contexts, an educator) is a person who helps others to acquire knowledge, competences or values.

Variables: A characteristic, number, or quantity that increases or decreases over time, or takes different values in different situations.

Effectiveness: These are the requirements of a competency based teacher education, which includes knowledge, skills and values the trainee teacher, must demonstrate for successful completion of the teacher education program.

Teaching Effectiveness: Teaching effectiveness is important because effective teaching helps student learning. It has become even more important as the emphasis on quality in higher education has increased. Effective teaching does not occur by chance. Effective teachers have become good at what they do because they evaluate their practice.