CHAPTER
ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Teaching is both an art and a
science. According to Anyanwu (2000), it is an instrumental, practical art
rather than a fine-art. That is teaching "requires an improvisation, spontaneity,
the handling of a vast array of considerations of form, style, pace, rhythm and
appropriateness in ways, so complex that even computers must lose the way"
(Anyanwu, 2000).
Tumble (2003) states that
teaching process is too complex, with a nearly infinite variety of
circumstances, subjects, student groups, and age groups to be reduced to
simple, how-to-do-it recipes.
Gage (2004) opines that
teaching can and should have a scientific basis. Science deals with
relationships between both input (independent) variables and output (dependent)
variables. According to Ernest (1990), a sizeable amount of good research has
been carried out that relates teaching and administrative practices to
students'' achievement as well as motivation, attitudes and self-esteem.
Ideally, with emphasis on
ideal, an effective, successful teacher would create a good academic atmosphere
and good school attitudes, maintain high academic engagement and successfully
manage the classroom to prevent inattentive, off-task and disruptive behaviour.
Realistically, however, misbehaviour will occur and the teacher must plan in
advance for handling it (Berliner 2001). Children must be oriented to learn new
material such as orientation by the teacher, often includes a review of home
work, a review of previous materials and skills, an explanation of the purposes
and objectives of the new material, and a statement of the relationship of the
current lesson to previous material. Asubel (2005) says that such orientation
or comments serve as advance organizers that help the children, easier to
relate to what children already know and therefore more learnable.
There are many teacher
characteristics and teaching patterns that correlate with higher children
achievement and or improved school attitudes, that is, with effective teaching.
Most relate to improvement of classroom climate, management and feedback and
reinforcement practices, involvement in self improvement and improvement of
other teaching practices that increase pupils’ engagement and content courage
and improve organisation, structuring and clarity, expectations or children
interest and motivation (Ayo, 2000).
The personality of the
teacher matters a lot in the classroom. According to Musson (2004), personality
of the teacher includes his emotion, motivation, values, goals and general ways
of perceiving his environment, have become molded up and processed through
training that he can be relied upon as a teacher. This also includes method of
conducting oneself that is, what one should do and what one should not do as a
member of teaching professions.
According to Akande (1999),
other qualities of the teacher that can affect his performance at work and
pupils'' academic achievement includes: Scholarship, cheerfulness, firmness,
tolerance, democratic attitude, impartiality, loyalty, having the knowledge of
the child''s psychology, honest, self discipline, sociability, creativity,
resourcefulness, neatness, good sense of humor, simplicity, adaptability etc.
Beside all these, the teachers should have a command of theoretical knowledge
about learning and human behaviour. He should possess the technical skills of
teaching that facilitate students'' learning achievement (Adeleke, 2002).
Furthermore, a teacher ought
to display such attitudes that promote learning and good human relationship,
and should have perfect mastery of facts of his subject matter as this will
enhance his/her teaching and pupils’ academic achievement.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
It is a truism that the
teacher is a moulder of character in the school. This is because of his
constant with the child. Nevertheless, the life style of the teacher is very
important to the effective learnability of the child. This is because, if the
teachers'' characters are negative, they will also affect the child''s behaviour
and academic performance negatively. Therefore, a teacher who is humane, who
possesses a democratic attitude, who is adaptable, sociable, creative,
resourceful, humorous, neat, disciplined, scholarly, tolerant, knowledgeable
etc will no doubt, influence the children attitudes towards learning. But
reversibly if the teacher is unsociable, lack knowledge of what to teach and
the methodology of how to teach he/she will not successfully carry out the
effective teaching and learning process in the school.
Also, if the teacher does not
have the knowledge of the psychology of the child, is not cheerful, not
creative, not resourceful, lacks self-discipline, is not firm and tolerant,
he/she cannot adapt properly with the teaching profession and his pupils will
possess negative perception of their academic work. Among other things,
children who are taught by teachers who do not possess positive
characteristics, will exhibit or manifest negative attitude to work both in the
school and also at home. The students trained by lazy and highly maladjusted
teacher, will automatically become lazy and maladjusted, and this will affect
their academic work which will result to low or poor academic achievement in
the school.
1.3 Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study is
to find out the effect of teachers’ attitude on preschool pupils’ academic
performance in selected schools in Mainland Local Government Area of Lagos
State.
Other specific objectives of
the study are to:
1.
find out whether teachers'' life style affect
pupilts'' academic performance in the school?
2.
determine whether there is a difference
between the attitude of pupils who are taught by teachers who are perceived to
have good life style and those perceived to possess bad life style.
3.
find out whether there is a difference between
the teaching of well behaved teachers and those who are not.
4.
determine whether teacher’s personality
affects pupils’ social adjustment in the school.
1.4 Research Questions
The following research
questions were posed in this study.
1.
Does teachers'' life style affect pupils’
academic performance?
2.
Will there be a significant difference between
the behaviour of pupils’ who are taught by teachers perceived to have good life
style and those with bad life style?
3.
Is there any significant difference in the
teaching method of teachers who behave well and those who do not?
4.
How can we differentiate teachers who behave
well and those who do not?
5.
What are the factors affecting human
behaviours or attitudes among teachers?
1.5 Research Hypotheses
These
hypotheses were formulated and tested in this study:
1. There will be no significant influence of
teachers'' life style on the academic performance of pupils.
2. There will be no significant difference
between the behaviour of pupils who are taught by good teachers and those
taught by bad teachers.
3. There will be no significant difference
between the teaching of well behaved teachers and those of the badly behaved
ones
1.6 Significance of the Study
1.
Teachers would benefit from this study,
because its findings and recommendations will direct them on how well to become
effective teachers with good characters. The findings of this study will
equally help teachers to have better insight on the essence of good behaviour
in the teaching profession.
2.
This study will assist the upcoming
researchers to carry out more work on the issues being treated in this study.
Also researchers and readers would find this work very important because, it
will serve as a reference material to their work.
3.
Pupils would benefit from the findings and
recommendations of this work because it would assist them to work hard,
identify teachers perceived to be either good or bad in the school. The
recommendations of this study would help pupils/children to change their attitudes
towards their studies.
4.
The society will also benefit from this study
immensely, including parents, the school administrators etc.
1.7 Scope of the Study
This
study covers the effect of teachers’ attitude on preschool pupils’ academic
performance in Mainland Local Government Area of Lagos State.
1.8
Definition of Terms
2
Teaching styles: It
is an embracing concept referring to the teacher’s ways of getting pupils to
learn through structured methodology.
3
Early childhood education: This
means education that is received from 0 – 8 years.
4
Teaching effectiveness: The
ability of the teacher to achieve the stated objectives at the end of the
teaching.
5
Teaching techniques:
Teacher’s ways or method of teaching.