Perceived Assessment Instructional Skill Needed by Primary School Teachers for Improving Teaching in Enugu State

Abstract

This study was carried out to investigate the perceived assessment instructional skill needed by primary school teachers for improving teaching in Enugu State, Nigeria. Two research questions and two null hypotheses guided the study. Descriptive survey design was used in the study. The population of the study consisted of 10, 415 public primary school teachers in Enugu State.  Sample size of the study was 1,196 teachers, comprising of 579 males and 617 female teachers. Multistage sampling technique was used in the selection of the sample size. Iinstrument used for data collection was ‘Perceived Assessment Instructional Skill Needed by Teachers Questionnaire (PAISNTQ). To determine the internal consistency of the instrument, Cronbach Alpha was usedand the result yielded 0.87. The data collected from questionnaire were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and T-test statistics. The results of the analysis revealed that assessment instructional skills teachers are: assessing the area of pupils’ needs through observation; finding out areas of weakness and strength in pupils by asking them questions; assigning homework, quiz and examination to pupils. Also, the results of the analysis revealed that there is no statistically significant difference in the mean rating of male and female teachers on the perceived assessment instructional skill needed by primary school teachers for improved teaching; and that there is no statistically significant difference in the mean rating of teachers in urban and rural public primary schools on the perceived assessment instructional skills needed by primary school teachers for improved teaching.  Based on the findings of the study, the researchers recommended, among others, that the assessment instructional skills discussed in this study should be integrated into the teacher education curriculum; and that primary school teachers should be constantly appraised in the area of assessment instructional skills.