Survey of Students' Opinions as a Strategy for Improving Lerner-friendly and Defective Classroom Encounters

Abstract

Based on the fact that virtually all the experiences to which learners are exposed in formal education are derived from a combination of psychological considerations, the expectations and prescriptions of the subject discipline, the society and its culture, the ideas of educational philosophers and curriculum experts, and that no conscious effort is normally made to consult the learners for opinions even at the secondary and tertiary education levels, the deschoolers have accused the school of teaching a hidden curriculum. Worried that even the prescriptions that are usually considered as contributory to effective teaching methodology are attributable to the ideas and principles enunciated by educational psychologists and philosophers, the researcher embarked on a pilot survey of students' opinions about teacher effectiveness. A questionnaire of the data blank to was administered to a sample of 80 Senior Secondary II students randomly selected from two Federal government Colleges (one boys' and one girls') located in the Federal Capital Territory Abuja. Effort was made to ensure gender balance in the selection of samples. The subjects were asked to state three objectives of being in school, three expectations from teachers and three objectives of being in school, three expectations from teachers and three hateful teacher-behaviors. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics. Results showed that adolescents in secondary schools were fully aware why they were in school and could discriminate the qualities of effective teachers. The researcher recommends that a realistic perception of effective teaching methodology should be a blending of the perspectives from teachers' pedagogical insights, the students' perspectives and the perspectives of the society that is the consumer of the college output.

Ethiopian Journal of Education and Sciences Vol. 3 (1) 2007: pp. 11-22