Continuous professional development challenges of teachers’ in Choggu and Bishop JHS and their effect on students’ academic performance in the Sagnarigu District

Abstract

The main purpose of the study was to investigate the influence of Continuous Professional Development of teachers on the academic performance of students in the Sagnarigu District and establish the relationship between them. The descriptive survey design was adopted for the study, describe and interpret teacher’s perceptions on continuous professional development. School performance test from the end of term examination were used to gather data for the survey from accessible population of all Junior High Three, one and two pupils in the district. Interview was also used to gather information from the head teachers of the respondents. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select 336 respondents (students), 16 teachers and four 4 head teachers. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (S.P.S.S.) software was used to analyze the data gathered to determine the correlation coefficient. Findings from the study indicated that teachers are satisfied with the way CPD programmes are organized, but they disagree with the satisfaction of its organization. Teachers disagreed that there is mechanism in place to supervise staff development activities. Teachers strongly agreed that during breaks/vacation is the best times to participate in CPD activities. For training materials to be made available to teachers to use after employers’ provision support for staff development, teachers indicated that these materials are not being made available to them. There was a moderate significant positive relationship between teacher’s academic qualifications on students’ academic performance, thus teachers with degree qualification have students with higher scores than teachers with diploma certificates. It is recommended that teachers, parents, policy makers and guidance and counselling coordinators should ensure that appropriate measures should be put in place to ensure that the organization of CPD is done with teachers inclusive and better mechanism should be put in place to ensure teachers transfer what they are trained for into the classroom for better outcome of result