Perception of Teachers on Confidentiality Practice as Part of Their Legal and Ethical Responsibilities in Secondary Schools in Kogi State (Published)
The paper assessed the perception of teachers on confidentiality practices as part of their legal and ethical responsibilities in secondary schools in Kogi State. The study has two objectives, among which is to examine the perception of teachers’ understanding of confidentiality practice as part of their legal and ethical responsibilities. The research questions and hypotheses were formed in line with the study objectives. Survey descriptive research design was used for the study, and the population includes all the secondary school principals in all the six hundred and fifty (650) schools in Kogi State and six thousand nine hundred (6900) teachers, and three hundred (300) supervisors drawn from the Ministry of Education. Purposive sampling technique was used to select a sample size of forty (40) principals across the three senatorial zones and three hundred and three (303) teachers and 30 supervisors from the inspectorate unit of the Ministry of Education, given a total sample size of three hundred and seventy-three (373). The instrument was structured questionnaire titled Perception of Teachers on Confidentiality Practices (POTCP), was developed and validated by experts in the field of education. The reliability of the instrument was tested using Cronbach’s Alpha, and 0.80 coefficient value was obtained. Data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics, mean and standard deviation, while the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The finding shows that teachers’ perception of confidentiality practices as part of their legal responsibility is very low, though the opinion of respondents differs in their responses, as it was shown in the hypotheses. The study concludes that teachers should be fully armed with the knowledge of confidentiality practices as part of their legal and ethical responsibilities. The study recommends that teachers without teaching qualifications should not be allowed to teach as they lack the ethics of the teaching profession, which includes confidentiality practices.
Keywords: Assessment, Confidentiality, Ethical, Legal, Perception, Teacher
Entrenching Quality Educational Output through Teachers’ Professional Ethics of Social Justice and Confidentiality (Published)
The study examined the entrenchment of quality educational output through teachers’ professional ethics of social justice and confidentiality in federal universities, South-South Zone of Nigeria. Two research questions were raised, and two hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The correlational research design was used for the study. The population of the study comprised 6,305 teaching staff and 32,613 graduating students in the 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 academic sessions distributed into the six federal universities in South-South Zone of Nigeria. Purposive and simple random sampling method of balloting were used to select 1,275 (20%) teaching staff and 3,517 (10%) students. Two instruments titled “Ethics of Social Justice and Confidentiality Questionnaire (ESJCQ)”, and “Graduate Educational Output Checklist (GEOC)” were used for data collection. The reliability co-efficient of ESJCQ was determined using the Cronbach Alpha Analysis and a reliability index of 0.87 was obtained. Coefficient of R value and R2 were used to answer the research questions, while the f-value of Simple Linear Regression Analysis was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that the quality of educational output in Nigerian South-South federal universities can be entrenched by teachers’ adherence to the ethics of social justice and confidentiality. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended that, teachers and administrators should face 21st century demands and adapt to tough academic and fiscal challenges by understanding the power of relational confidentiality and trust as an instructional tool for improving student performance. Furthermore, Institutional leaders and stake holders should ensure that teachers’ professional development programmes focuses on enlightening teachers on how to integrate equity, activism, fairness, justice and the elimination of oppression in order to positively impact students’ educational output.
Keywords: Confidentiality, Federal Universities, Quality, Social Justice, Teachers, educational output, professional ethics