TEACHING SUBJECT CHALLENGES AND AREA OF TEACHING SUBJECT: IMPLICATION FOR SECONDARY SCHOOL SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND MATHEMATICS TEACHERS

Babayemi, John Olakunle¹ ; Itighise, Atim Edet² ,Umanah, Felicia Imeh³ & Abasi, Andrew Umo⁴ & Umoh, Etim Bassey⁵

ABSTRACT

This study investigated secondary school science, technology and mathematics teachers’ teaching subject challenges in Onna Local Government Area. Two research questions were used for the study. Descriptive survey design was used. The population of the study comprised of all the secondary school science, technology and mathematics teachers in the nine public secondary schools in the study Area. A sample size of 51 secondary school science, technology and mathematics teachers drawn from seven randomly selected secondary schools was used for the study. One instrument used was Questionnaire on Teaching Subject Challenges (QTSC). The instrument was validated by two (2) lecturers and found to have a reliability index of 0.75 using cronbach alpha. Data obtained from research instrument were analyzed using mean score, standard deviation, percentages, frequency count and analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result showed that teachers encountered most teaching challenges, all the teachers that were used for the study irrespective of their areas of teaching subject, had similar teaching challenges. It is therefore, recommended that secondary school science, technology and mathematics teachers should endeavour to collaborate on professional issues and undergo on-the-job-training in order to solve the most classroom teaching challenges. 

Keywords:         Teaching Challenges, Area of Teaching Subject, Subject Specialization, Basic Science and Technology, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics