NEW TEACHERS’ SOFT SKILLS AND PRODUCTIVITY IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN RIVERS STATE, NIGERIA
Abstract
The study investigated new teachers´ soft skills and productivity in senior secondary schools in Rivers State, Nigeria. Three research questions were answered while three null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 of significance. The theory was anchored on transformational (transformative) learning by Jack Mezirow in 1978. The study adopted a correlational research design. The population comprised all of the 268 government owned Secondary Schools in Rivers State with 8452 teachers. The sample size for this study was 470 representing 5.56% of the population size using the Taro Yamane formula. Proportionate stratified random sampling technique was used to draw the 470 respondents from the strata. Two sets of instruments titled New Teachers’ Soft Skills Questionnaire (NTSSQ) and Productivity of Teachers Questionnaire (PTQ) were used for data collection. Face and content validities were ensured by experts. The reliability coefficient of the NTSSQ and PTQ were 0.90 and 0.88 with the use of Cronbach alpha. Multiple regression and Pearson Product Moment correlation coefficient were used to answer the research questions. ANOVA associated with multiple regression and z-ratio were used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 alpha level of significance. It was found that emotional intelligence and creative and critical thinking as well as creative and critical thinking and productivity have significant positive moderate and high relationships of 0.50 and 0.64 respectively in Public Senior Secondary Schools in Rivers State. It was recommended among others that; teachers should mostly use exploration teaching method in order to allow the students to critically think out of the box.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejes.v0i0.2909
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