AVAILABILITY OF QUALIFIED TEACHERS IN EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING OF CRS IN JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS ENUGU
CHAPTER ONE:
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Realizing from the onset the importance of education, Lawal (2003) points out that “Education is a powerful instrument of social progress without which no individual can attain professional development.” It then follows that the best way to enhance instruction is through teacher education programs, which are key to understanding both teaching and learning. Such programs are meant to help individual teachers grow and develop as teachers, provide them with the skills and professional abilities to motivate children to learn, and to assist them in acquiring the right understanding of the concepts, values, and attitudes needed, not only to manage classroom instruction but also to contribute to the society in which they are born, grow, and live. Thus, teacher education is designed to produce a highly motivated, sensitive, consci-entious, and successful classroom teacher who will handle students effectively and professionally for better educational achievement. For this reason, teacher education is a part of the education process or training that deals with the art of acquiring teaching skills. It is an essential exercise that enhances the skills of learning and teaching.
In Nigeria, reasonable preparations are made to improve teachers’ professional development through the establishment of colleges of education, both at the federal and state levels. Institutes of education and faculties of education in various universities are also established to provide effective and professional teacher education programs. In such institutions, students are trained to form habits that will help them become teachers capable of shouldering responsibili-ties, showing initiative and being good models for their future pupils.
Additionally, the National Policy on Education [NPE] (1989) Section 9, sub-section 65 states that at the National Certificate in Education (NCE) anddegree levels, teacher education programs will be expanded to cater to the requirements of vocational, technical, and commercial education. The sub-sec-tion also recognizes the problems with Nigeria’s education system and the fed-eral government’s promises to implement the commission’s recommendations by providing physical facilities and qualified staffs in schools. Sub-section 67 acknowledges the federal government’s willingness to direct the universities to work out a program to make it possible for suitable qualified holders of the Na-tional Certificate in Education (NCE) to complete a degree in education at the university in two years instead of the present three years. Sub-section 73 states that teacher education will continue
to recognize changes in methodology and curriculum, and with the promise that teachers will be regularly exposed to innovations in their profession, in-service training will be developed as an in-tegral part of continuing teacher education. The NPE further argues in sub-section 74 that “No matter the efficiency of the pre-service training we give to teachers, there will necessarily be areas of inadequacies. In-service education for teachers will continue to fill these gaps. For instance, library service educa-tion, evaluation techniques, guidance and counseling, etc. will be systemati-cally planned so that successful attendance at a number of such courses will attract incremental credit and/or count towards future advancement.”
Even with all these statements and programs in place, little has been achieved. However, the goal for which these moderate preparations were made has had no meaning because we have always expected that the products of these institutions will be employed to handle the instructional processes in our schools for which they are trained, yet incompetent teachers are still employed to carry out teaching. Educators in Nigeria (e.g., Adigwe, 1992; Odor, 1995) have argued that the falling educational standards can be attributed to the use of teachers who are unqualified for instructional purposes, including those with general education (academic) qualifications such as BSc., BA., MSc., and MA. degrees etc. Those of us who care about education and how to best to improve its quality worry about this development in Nigeria.
The teaching of CRS dates back to the 19th century with the pioneers of Nigerian education (Banjo, 2003). During the missionary administration because of the moral values it teaches the people. Following the government takeover of schools, Nigerian, secondary school curriculum was reviewed and more emphasis was placed on the studies of science and technological subjects. This shift affected the study and interest of students in CRS in school system leading to poor enrollment in CRS. Gbenda (2004) stresses that student’s enrollment and interest in CRS could as well be as of result of inadequate provision of teaching aids, fewer professional teachers and lack of incentives among other things. Njoku (2009) equally adduced that poor enrollment of student in CRS could be attributed to teacher’s instructional delivery system and teachers’ personality. CRS is taught in all the senior secondary schools in Nigerian as an elective subject. The elective nature of the subject in senior secondary schools in Nigeria equally reduced the number of students that register for the subject in West African examination council (WAEC) and national examination council (NECO) as well as other internal examination. CRS is a subject that bases its teaching on the life and teaching of Jesus Christ (Ugwu, 2001) as a teaching subject, it is not only geared towards converting people to Christianity, but is necessary for value formation, orientation and reorientation of value system as well as spiritual upliftment of the student. Ali and Akubue in Njoku (2009) observed that, CRS is a subject which aims at developing and fostering in the lives of the students Christian attitudes and values such as respect to life, obedience to constitutional authority, responsible self, selfless series to God and humanity. To them, CRS is seen as an academic discipline that is designed to provide the leaner with moral and spiritual transformation. This shows that CRS is the study of Christian lifestyles such as love, caring, patience, faith, forgiveness and hope in God as well as good relationship among men. Obanya in Njoku (2004) maintained that CRS like every other subjects has five features. These features are; a set of rational theoretical formulation, inherent capacity for growth, applicable solution to human problems, organized Body of the knowledge and a degree of uniformity with other area of academic activities. In the context of this study, CRS is defined as a social science subject that teaches students good moral behaviour, fearing of God, knowledge and skills that will make them to contribute their quota in socio-economic and moral development in senior secondary schools. The inclusion of sound religions and moral values in the life of students invariably could help in the development of spiritual and moral sound being of the students. These important values attached to the study of CRS in schools cannot be achieved if teachers do not utilized effective teaching method that appeals to all the senses of students in leaning situations.
Following the shift in the study of CRS, motivation started dwindling, and interest in the subject dropped Arinze (1982:28) observed that the teaching of the subject witnessed slackening of control by principals /head teachers, difficulty of training and assigning teachers, placing the subject in the school timetable, teachers’ lack of commitment and other defects such as students’ dishonesty, examination malpractices and disrespect to mention but a few. In support of the above assertion, Ndarwa (2007) maintained that pupils nowadays are groomed to be intellectual giants in science and technology with little or no interest in the moral growth, this he referred to as spiritually dwarfism. Ndarwa maintained that when the children /pupils grow older, they may create an avenue to close the spiritual vacuum. Some of the pupils may join secret cults to perpetuate evil in diverse forms.
The major aims of inclusion of CRS in the education curriculum is to raise generation of people who can think for themselves, respect the views and feelings of others, appreciate dignity of labour and those moral values specified in the broad national aims as good citizens. While at the secondary school level the subject is meant to prepare learners for useful living through inculcation of Christian attitudes and values, and to prepare learners for higher education (Akubue, 1992:16-17).
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