IMPACT OF TEACHER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT ON TEACHING AND LEARNING IN JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN ANAMBRA STATE

Abstract

This study examined impact of teacher professional development on teaching and learning in junior secondary schools in Anambra state. It was guided by four research questions and one hypothesis was tested. The study adopted the descriptive survey design. The population of the study comprised of 4,095 junior secondary school teachers in the school. Multi stage procedure involving proportionate sampling and simple random sampling (balloting without replacement) were used to draw the sample. This amounted to 180 teachers as sample for the study. Instrument used for data collection was a 20 item questionnaire distributed to 180 junior secondary school teachers. Out of this number, 158 were duly completed, returned and used for the study. The instrument for the study was tagged Impact of Teacher Professional Development on Teaching and Learning (ITPDTL) with reliability coefficients of 0.76, 0.74, 0.68 and 0.73 for the four clusters and an overall coefficient of 0.72. The reliability was determined using Cronbach Alpha technique. Analysis of data collected was done g arithmetic mean scores to answer the four research questions while t-test was used in testing the hypothesis at 0.05 alpha level. Findings revealed among other things that to a high extent, teachers are aware of terms like instructional material, teaching methodology, evaluation and classroom management. Findings also revealed that most teachers, to a high extent lacked the professional development in these areas due to lack of consistent re-training exercise. It also revealed that year of experience has been helpful in teaching profession. Based on these findings, it was recommended among others that teachers need retraining workshops on uses of instructional materials, sensitization on methods of teaching, use of different evaluation strategies and exposed to classroom management practices to effectively manage students in their classes.