EFFECT OF VITAMINS C AND E INTAKE ON BLOOD ... - EuroJournals

International Research Journal of Finance and Economics – Volume 2, Number I (2006)
Universal Basic Education (UBE) programme by the federal government in 1999, training and
retraining of teachers for primary and secondary education have received added impetus. While the
colleges of education in the country produce teachers mainly for the primary schools, over 32 out of
about 60 public and private universities in the country offer teacher education programmes of three or
four-year duration, depending on the entry qualifications of the teacher education candidates. Teacher
candidates who gain admission into the universities through the University Matriculations Examination
follow the four-year programme and do some general studies in the first year before embarking on the
professional teacher development aspect of the programme in the second year. The three-year
programme is for those with more advanced educational qualifications who gain admission through
direct entry and start with professional development programme from their first year of studies.
An important component of the teacher education programme is the teaching practice or the
practicum. Students in both programmes go for teaching practice twice in the course of their studies.
With minor variations among the universities, the first practicum takes place after the first year of
professional development studies and the second one takes place a year later. Both of them consist of a
six-week teaching block and require full-time commitment of student teachers in secondary schools
where they are supervised and their teaching performance is assessed by their university lecturers.
The problem
Nigerian universities send student teachers in their thousands every year to schools all over
Nigeria to acquire field experience in teaching but the concerns of these preservice teachers and even
the serving teachers have received little, if any attention by Nigerian educational administrators and
university teacher educators. Nor have educational researchers shown any interest in the problem.
Consequently, empirical data on the concerns of both preservice teachers and serving teachers are
lacking in the country. This study was, therefore, designed to identify the clusters of, and specific
concerns of preservice teachers in regard to their teaching practice. The subjects of this study were
undergraduate students of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. The university, which was
founded in 1962, is one of the first generation universities in Nigeria. Since its inception it has been
running a teacher education programme for the production of teachers for secondary schools. Like
other universities in the country, students following this programme embark on a mandatory six-week
teaching practice exercise twice in Parts Two and Three of the programme. Specifically, the study
sought answers to the following questions:
1. What are the specific concerns of Obafemi Awolowo University student teachers about
teaching practice?
2. What type(s) of concerns are most important to them?
3. Do the concerns of preservice teachers with previous teaching practice experiences differ from
those with such experiences?
It is expected that the results of this study will be useful to Nigerian educators for the planning and
review of teacher education programmes. This kind of study will also be useful to the preservice
teachers and school administrators including supervisors, school principals and Ministry of Education
personnel, in order to help them to understand the concerns of beginning teachers. Addressing these
concerns appropriately will (hopefully) decrease the rate of attrition of teacher candidates as they go
through their programmes (O’Connor & Taylor, 1992). Such a study is particularly necessary in the
Nigerian context where teaching is an unattractive profession and does not attract academically good
candidates for training compared to other professions. This is mainly because teaching continue, to be
accorded low social status in Nigeria inspite of the efforts of both state and federal governments to
improve the working conditions of civil servants, including teachers, in the country.
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