A survey of perceived hindrances to junior secondary school science teaching

Abstract

This study investigated situations which Junior Secondary Schools (JSS) teachers perceived as hindrances to their teaching functions. A 30-item questionnaire with a 5-point scale was used to collect data from 116 science teachers who taught in private and public schools. The schools were based in rural and urban settings. An examination of the rank ordered hindrances showed that large class sizes, heavy teaching load, lack of funds to purchase materials and inadequate treatment of certain topics in the pupils' textbooks hindered JSS science teachers the most. It was also found that different percentages of teachers perceived each of the situations (the main instrument described) as a serious hindrance. The percentages varied from 68.1 (heavy teaching load) to 14.6 (lack of knowledge in biology). Statistical analysis of the data using the z-test for 2-sample cases showed no significant difference between the hindrances perceived by three compared groups of teachers namely, teachers in rural and urban schools, teachers in private and public schools and teachers who specialised in science and their colleagues who did not. A significant difference was however found between the hindrances perceived by male and female teachers. One major finding of the study is that due to the lack of science teachers in the public schools, teachers who taught other non-science subjects such as Cultural Studies, Life Skills, Social Studies and English Language were assigned to teach science.

African Journal of Educational Studies in Mathematics and Sciences Vol. 2(2) 2004: 51-63