An Assessment of Teachers' Attitude towards Teaching Profession in Midwestern Nigeria.

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Recent events in Nigeria show that the traditional respect and prestige enjoyed by teachers in the society have been eroded quite considerably (Awanbor, 1996) and indeed, loss of interest and attraction to the teaching profession. Consequently, this sordid situation occasioned by low enrolment of teachers in preparation institutions has become a source of worry to teacher trainers. Awanbor (1996) reported that some teacher-trainees in the college of Education did not appear to be particularly enthused by the training goal of teaching as they indicated that the teaching profession was really not an attractive profession to them. Recently, it was revealed that of the more than 700,000 candidates processed by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) for admission into the various universities courses, only about 10,000 (0.0147%) applied to education, yet we need teachers to teach the far more than 20 million children in the Nigerian school system (Awanbor, 1999). According to Nwaokolo (1993) the cause of this problem is traceable to the low status accorded the Nigerian teacher by the Nigerian public. In a study by Taiwo (1980), he observed that the teaching profession had gone down on the scale of respectability and that was causing a number of teachers to drift into more respectable forms of employment. In another development., Omoregie in 1994 reports that the attrition rate of teachers, particularly secondary school teachers is attributable to the general poor attitude to the teaching profession. Similarly, Ojo (1971) stated that the university graduates who form the bulk of the teaching staff in the post-primary institutions were leaving the profession at an alarming rate. Nwangwu (1997) observed that the crisis in Nigerian education system is traceable to lack of interest and low morale due to poor social status. Equally more problematic, according to Nwaokolo (1998 & 1999) was the tact that teachers themselves were experiencing low morale and poor self-esteem. Afe (1998) opines that the standing of the teaching profession is affected by the social background, adding that the low status constitutes a problem in recruiting competent hands into the profession. Therefore, one of the challenges facing the profession and teaching after 2000 AD is to raise the status of the profession. The teacher, as noted by Awanbor (1998) has become a shadow of himself having lost out in professional competence and social regards. The difficulty in recruiting and training teachers has been traced to the low status accorded the Nigerian teachers and apparent loss of interest and attraction of the profession. Nwaokolo (1993) broadly categorized the factors responsibly for the low status to include poor conditions of services, teachers' negative personal and professional behaviors, teaching occupation's semi-professional status, and wider society negative influence. Therefore, the present study sought to obtain empirical evidence on the status of teachers and the teaching profession in Nigeria and propose way to enhance the image of the Nigerian teacher and the profession. Methodology The study employed a simple survey method to gather data on teachers' attitude towards teaching profession. The target group for this study comprised 400 post primary school teachers randomly drawn from 40 post primary schools in Midwestern Nigeria. From each post primary school, 10 teachers were selected through simple random sampling procedure. Thus a total of 400 post primary school teachers constituted the research sample for the study. Instrument The major instrument for data collection was the Teacher's Attitude Questionnaire (TAQ) developed by the researchers. The instrument sought teacher's general attitude towards teaching and rating of factors responsible for teacher's low status. Data/responses collected were analyzed using mean response and rank order. …