AN EVALUATION OF TEACHERS’ PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS AND THEIR IMPACT ON STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT(A CASE STUDY OF LAGOS STATE).
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study
Any nation’s economic expansion depends on the success of its education and labor market. The foundation of any nation’s economic growth and technological advancement is education. As one of the oldest industries, education is the primary tool society uses to preserve, update, upgrade, and maintain a balanced social heritage. The goal of education, according to the Federal Ministry of Education (2013), is to teach students literacy in addition to rational thinking, knowledge, skill, self-efficacy, and self-reliance. According to Uza (2014), one of the primary objectives of education in Nigeria is the acquisition of appropriate skills and the growth of mental, physical, and social abilities that support human and individual endeavor to live and contribute to society’s development. Educators are supposed to involve creative helping strategies during guidance to accomplish the instructive objective, bringing about unfortunate scholarly accomplishment. The majority of students who enroll in examinations graduate without a solid understanding of the fundamentals of those subjects, as evidenced by this pattern of low student achievement in class. The majority of teachers, according to research reports (Agba, 2004), prefer to deliver curriculum using traditional teaching methods. Therefore, as an intervention, Efe and Efe (2011) urged teachers to employ a variety of innovative teaching strategies, such as problem-solving instruction. Students’ development of problem-solving skills, functional knowledge, and science process skills are hindered by poor teaching and learning practices. Ipaye (1991) claims that the traditional lecture approach fails to accomplish the objectives of teaching Social Studies. According to Ipaye (1991), Nigerian students’ performance on the West African School Certificate Examinations (WASCE) had been declining over time. As a result, in order to stem the tide of poor exam performance, he suggested that professional educators try out new teaching methods. Adewuya (2003) also found that secondary schools have a rate of absorption as low as 20 to 30 percent due to the lecture method. Abdu-Raheem (2010) came to the conclusion that the lecture method is ineffective for teaching Social Studies in secondary schools in Ekiti State, Nigeria.
To meet this challenge, education must look for more reliable and efficient methods of teaching students so that they can develop the skills they need to succeed in a society dominated by technology and science. Long (1991) presents a new vision for teacher educators and suggests that instructors will need to be flexible, dynamic, insightful, and ready to deal with change. He went on to say that skilled teachers will be able to evaluate their methods of instruction in order to meet the needs of their students. These novel strategies have not been utilized in Nigeria in comparison to the conventional approach taken by science instructors (Owolabi, 2006). In problem-solving, questions, sorting, field trips, interviews, brainstorming, role-playing, projects, making use of people with resources, searching the library, and other creative activities are all used (Adewuya, 2003). Students are encouraged to engage in problem-solving activities such as forming hypotheses, experimenting with assumptions, collecting and analyzing data, seeking additional information, evaluating, exploring, and accumulating topics and ideas in all of these methods.
1.2 A description of the issue Over the course of many years, complaints have been made about the declining quality of education in Nigeria. The typical understudies’ exhibition in the senior auxiliary school declaration assessment (SSCE) and the public assessment gathering (NECO) is not a huge deal which sadly doesn’t lean toward the specialized development and progression of the country. Given the significance of education, it is essential to emphasize teachers’ problem-solving skills in order to achieve the desired improvement in students’ learning outcomes, particularly in senior secondary schools, in physics.
Recent studies have shown that teachers’ problem-solving skills have a significant impact on students’ learning styles, which in turn affects their performance. For instance, Rockoff (2004) and Hanushek (1998, 2005) discovered that teachers’ problem-solving skills and quality competency contribute to an increase in students’ academic success of at least seven percent and one standard deviation, respectively. Numerous stakeholders in the subject have viewed the low performance of students as a serious problem. This activity-based course’s curriculum emphasizes the use of the activity-based learning method, just like it does for any other science topic. Unfortunately, teachers tend to avoid activity-based teaching methods and instead rely heavily on easy-to-follow lectures, which, in most cases, are insufficient and inappropriate for meaningful learning, as reported by researchers like Lakpini (2006) and Lawal (2009). The study examined the teachers’ problem-solving abilities and their impact on students’ academic achievement at this point.
Using Lagos State as a case study, the study’s broad objective is to investigate teachers’ problem-solving abilities and their impact on students’ academic achievement. In particular, the study aims to:
1. Determine whether using a problem-solving approach can improve students’ critical thinking in secondary school.
2. Determine whether brainstorming as a problem-based method can teach secondary school students how to solve problems.
3. Examine whether the problem-based approach to teaching is more innovative and preferable to the conventional lecture approach.
4. Determine whether the student-centered approach of the teacher’s problem-solving skills can affect academic achievement.
1.4 The First Research Hypothesis: As a problem-based method, brainstorming cannot teach secondary school students how to solve problems.
HO2: As a student-centered approach, teachers’ problem-solving skills cannot influence academic achievement.
1.5 Importance of the Study This research is based on the assumption that the results will have theoretical and practical implications. Teachers, curriculum planners for students, and educational administrators will all benefit from the study. Because it will shed light on current theories that have the potential to influence problem solving, the study may be deemed theoretically significant. The information from the study’s findings would be used by curriculum planners in curriculum planning. The data may assist curriculum planners in assessing the senior secondary biology curriculum’s problem-solving capacity. Lastly, the study would add empirically to the existing literature and serve as a resource for students and other researchers interested in conducting research on the same subject.
1.6 The scope of the study Using Lagos State as a case study, the study’s broad objective is to investigate teachers’ problem-solving abilities and their impact on students’ academic achievement. The purpose of the study is to ascertain whether a problem-solving approach can improve critical thinking among secondary school students. It will determine whether brainstorming, as a problem-based method, can teach secondary school students how to solve problems. It will investigate whether the problem-based teaching approach is superior to the conventional lecture approach in terms of innovation and preference. However, the study is restricted to a few secondary schools in the Ikeja Local Government.
1.7 The study’s limitations As with any human endeavor, the researchers were limited in some way during the course of their research. Due to the nature of the discourse, the significant constraint was the lack of relevant literature on the subject. As a result, the researcher had to choose a small sample size and spent more time searching for relevant materials, literature, or information as well as collecting data. The researcher will also be working on other academic projects while working on this study. Even more so, the choice of the sample size was limited because only a small number of people were selected to answer the research instrument. As a result, the results cannot be applied to other business entities. However, in order to provide the best possible results and ensure the success of the research, all factors were downplayed despite the constraints that were encountered during the study.
1.8 Terms and their definitions Teaching Method: The principles and strategies utilized by teachers to facilitate student learning make up a teaching method. These methods are partly determined by the subject matter being taught and partly by the learner’s characteristics.
Problem-Based Instruction: PBL is a method of teaching in which students attempt to solve a single unfamiliar problem or a set of problems. As a result of its constructivist foundation, PBL encourages active learning.
Skills for Problem-Solving: The problem-solving method teaches students by having them work on problems. By tackling the problems to be solved, the students are able to gain new knowledge. It is expected of the students to observe, comprehend, analyze, interpret, find solutions, and apply those solutions to achieve a comprehensive comprehension of the concept.
Academic success: The degree to which a school or student has reached their short- and long-term educational objectives is known as academic achievement. Students’ grade point averages can be used to measure achievement, while graduation rates for institutions can be used to measure achievement.
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