Primary School Teachers’ Comfortability with Generalised Teaching in Public Schools in Osun State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated the level of comfortability, adequacy of training/skills, influence of gender and years of experience on teachers preference for specialized teaching. Survey research design was adopted, and 254 teachers in Osun state, Nigeria participated in the study. Questionnaire on advocacy for specialised teaching in public primary schools was used to elicit information from the respondents. The result showed that 52% of the teachers were not comfortable with generalised teaching. The teachers reported having competence in teaching most of the major subjects except Health education, Music, Computer studies and French (99%, 96%, 80.7% and 94% respectively). Furthermore, agreement of teachers to specialized teaching across gender showed significant difference (χ²=15.457, p>0.05), but no significant difference with years of teaching experience (χ²= 13.362, p <0.05)). It was therefore concluded that specialised subject teaching should be adopted in Nigerian primary schools.