Assessing the Assessors from the Student Angle: Implication for Quality Assurance in Public Secondary Schools in Lagos Mainland Local Government Area of Lagos State, Nigeria (Published)
Visionary teachers are needed to achieve quality teaching and learning in the school. It is now firmly believed that the effective functioning of an organization depends largely on employees’ efforts that extend beyond formal role requirements. This study therefore investigated the predictive power of some quality assurance indices (school climate, principals’ leadership role, instructional supervision, availability and utilization of instructional resources) on teachers’ job effectiveness in secondary schools. Five hundred and eighty-three (583) Senior Secondary School students comprising of 268 males and 315 females were sampled for this study. Self-developed instrument tagged “Quality Assurance in Education” was employed to obtain responses from the participants. Analyses of data were done using descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis fixed at the .05 significant levels. Results revealed 16% of the variance in the teachers’ job effectiveness was accounted for by the combination of instructional supervision, instructional resources, school climate, and principal leadership ((R = .817; R2 = .667; R2 (adj) = .663; F(4,582) = 20.376; p < .05). This revealed that among others that school climate was the most potent predictor (β = .300; t = 7.354; p < .05), followed by principal leadership style; (β = .279; t = 5.897; p <. 05), instructional supervision (β = .151; t = 5.098; p > .05); and lastly by instructional resources (β = .093; t = 3.765; p > .05). The findings showed that students’ assessment based on the quality assurance indices were potent in the prediction of teachers’ job effectiveness. Based on the outcome of this study, it was recommended that Since the work environment is significantly related to job effectiveness of teachers, government should encourage the support of parents, students, philanthropists, and corporate institutions in improving secondary schools’ work environment in terms of physical facilities, information services, authority-staff relationship, and staff development in order to enhance better job performance of the teachers.
Keywords: Job Effectiveness, Principals’ Leadership Role, Quality Assurance, School climate, Secondary Schools, Teachers
RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SCHOOL CLIMATE AND STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN KSCE EXAMINATIONS: A CASE OF KISII COUNTY-KENYA (Published)
There are different types of school climate that impact student performance. These include positive and negative climates. A school climate which is positive allows students to perform better as it supports students morally, physically as well as academically. Whereas negative school climate cannot bring about school improvement and enhanced school effectiveness and entails that the school is poor or lacks physical resources, interactions is poor, or learning does not take place smoothly. The school which is having a positive climate fosters learning to take place and while the school which has negative climate impedes learning and hence students may develop tendency of disliking subjects. This study was guided by system theory by von Bertalanffy. According to von Bertalanffy the main task of general systems theory is to study the common aspects of systems and from this to formulate models, Principles and laws that apply to generalized systems and their sub-classes (Screerens, 2000).This study employed mixed research methods which utilized both correlational descriptive survey and case study designs. Stratified and simple random sampling procedures were used to get twenty (20) secondary schools .The instrument that were used in data collection included questionnaires, Structured interview schedule and observation guide .The analysis of data from questionnaires; observation guide and structured interview schedule were categorized, and entered into the computer for computation of descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics were analysed and presented in frequency tables and percentages while inferential statistics were presented by standard deviations and means to generate data that was used to test the hypotheses .Pearson’s product moment correlation analysis was employed to determine whether there are significant relationships between the variables under study. Hypotheses’ testing was carried out at 0.05 confidence level. Qualitative data was organized in themes and narrative. Findings revealed that sub-county secondary school face shortage of highly qualified and experienced teachers, teaching and learning materials, physical infrastructure, and incentives for students and teachers compared to county and National schools. The study recommended that teachers should strive to create a friendly classroom learning environment that is fovaurable for learning to take place, students should be encouraged to put their personal efforts in academic matters and the government should address teacher shortage and distribution in schools across all the counties.
Keywords: Negative school climate, Positive school climate, School climate, Student academic achievement