A Wee Evaluative Study of the Academic Orientation of Lagos State Junior Secondary School Teachers

Abstract

This study investigated the academic orientation of Junior Secondary School teachers in Lagos, Nigeria, using 384 participants that were sampled from the States’ six Educational Districts. It focused on the quality, magnitudes and differences existing among teachers on the basis of their discipline and the Education District where they teach. Academic orientation for teachers in Arts/Religion Departments was found to be slightly higher than for all other Departments. Teachers in Educational District 5 had the highest mean, followed closely by Educational District 6. The range of scores for all the districts was 0.55, SD=0.261. In general, the classification of ratings of teachers’ academic orientation yielded a value of 5.03, which, by the rating scale of COC-B, the instrument that was used for data gathering, translate to “fair” performance. Using Multivariate analysis of Variance to test the hypothesis for the study, no statistically significant difference was observed in the academic orientation of Lagos State Junior Secondary School teacher irrespective of their discipline and the educational district where they work. It is suggested that attention be paid to the retraining of teachers, and that prospective teachers be trained before they take on the job if teachers would be expected to fulfil their roles in the transformation agenda of this nation.

Keywords:  Academic orientation; conceptual orientation; subject-matter specialist.