Attitude of Students in Obio-Akpor and Ehomua Local Government Areas towards the Teaching Profession: Implications for Guidance Counsellors

Abstract

This is a descriptive study that investigated the attitude of secondary school students towards the teaching profession. A sample of 520 SS111 students from two local government areas of Rivers State, Nigeria participated in the study. Three research questions and two hypotheses were designed to guide the study. The research questions were answered using mean and hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance using t-test. The instrument for data collection was Attitude to Teaching Profession Questionnaire (ATPQ) validated by three senior lecturers in the Department of Psychology, Guidance and Counselling, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Its reliability coefficient as obtained using test-retest method was 0.82. The data generated from the instrument were analyzed using SPSS. The results revealed that the students irrespective of gender and location of their schools had a negative attitude towards the teaching profession. There was a significant difference in attitude towards the teaching profession between male and female students in favour of the female students. Also significant difference towards the teaching profession existed between students whose schools were situated in rural areas and those whose schools were situated in urban centres in favour of those whose schools were situated in rural areas. The implication of the finding of a negative attitude towards the teaching profession among the students is that the government has not done enough to improve the salary and condition of service of the teachers. Again, the efforts of career counsellors to make secondary school students realize that no nation can have sound economic and technological development without quality teachers have not yielded the desired results.

Keywords: Attitude, negative, positive, favourable, unfavourable, intense, salient, acquired and inferred.