EXTENT SELECTED FACTORS AFFECT THE TEACHING OF COMPUTER SCIENCE IN JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN EBONYI STATE
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Abstract
Computer plays a vital role in teaching and learning in this 21st century world. Without the knowledge of computer in our education system, it would be very difficult for our children or student to compete with their contemporaries globally. Government appreciates and understands the importance of computer science in our education system and has formulated different policies to see that computer science is taught in our schools from primary, secondary & tertiary levels. The essence is to make students computer literate. This study sought to establish the extent some selected factors affect the teaching of computer science in Junior Secondary Schools in Ebonyi State. Five research questions and three hypotheses guided the study. An instrument containing 39-items was developed and used to obtain data from a population of 200 computer science teachers of junior secondary schools in Ebonyi State. The reliability of the instrument was established to ascertain the internal consistency and a reliability coefficient of 0.76 was obtained using Cronbach alpha at 0.05 level of significance. The instrument has two parts: A and B. Part A sought information on the demography of the respondents, while part B has five sections of the questionnaire items. Findings revealed that if government and institutions’ authorities do not employ qualified computer teachers to teach computer science, it might hamper adequate teaching and learning of it. In addition to that, inadequate availability of computers, inadequate or poor ICT facilities application in schools, class size and attitudes of teachers also affect the teaching of computer science in JSS. The result of the hypotheses showed that there is no significant difference in the mean responses of male and female teachers on the qualification of teachers. HO2 showed that there is a significant difference in the mean responses of urban and rural teachers on the extent of the availability of computer science teachers in JSS, while HO3 revealed that there is no significance difference on the attitude of male & female teachers of computer science. Based on these findings, it was recommended that only qualified computer teachers should be employed and trained. Government should upgrade existing computer science facilities; school authorities and government should provide adequate classroom for computer teaching and learning. Suggestions for further studies were also made.