THE ASSESSMENT OF TEACHER’S QUALIFICATION IN TEACHING AND LEARNING OF INTEGRATED SCIENCE IN NIGERIA (EDUCATION PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
CHAPTER ONE
- INTRODUCTION
- BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Teacher competence and qualities are concepts that are often referred to as frequently applied to different educational context. Whitty (2006) identifies professional competence, which includes knowledge and understanding of children and their learning subject knowledge, curriculum, the education system and the teachers role. Professional competence also necessitates skills such as subject application, classroom methodology, classroom management, assessment and recording and undertaking a wider role.Teacher with high competence is one of the most significant factors that manipulate the student learning as well as serving the schools to meet its objectives and missions. The importance of teachers cannot be over stressed. This is because teachers play a number of role specifically, teachers has been referred to be Oyedeji (1998) as an agent of innovation. For meaningful innovations, teachers’ academic qualification is very important.
This is because teacher education is a very complex enterprise. The complicity arises as a result of several factors which include determination of what effective teachers are, teachers are expected to fulfill a verity of roles, some common to all teachers, others uniquely related to certain kinds of environments of students or subject matter. Added to this is the fact that teacher education involves the raining of professionals who will educate students in future. Despite the complexity in the field of teacher education, one cannot over emphasize the importance of academic training of teachers of all categories. This is because the efficiency of any institution depends on the academic competence of the teaching staff since no educational system can rise above the quality of its teachers (FGN 2005).
A number of studies carried out had indicated the need for teacher’s academic qualification in their various teaching subject. Such studies include those of swan and Jones (2004), Rubba (2005), Ivowi (1985, 1986) Skintola (1999). Soyibo (2009), Abimbola (2010) and Otuka (2000), Swan and Jones (2004) finding was that teachers should receive appropriate training in the subject matter area so that their classroom instruction could be above board. Rubba’s (2007) study indicated that teachers have needs according to the science discipline taught Ivowi, Akintola, Soyinbo, Abimbola and Otuka found out misconception is in students which they traced to misconceptions held by their teachers. All the above studies prove that training of prospective teachers in the subject matter areas should not be taken lightly by science educators.
