Wednesday 29 May 2013

Lack of Qualified and Motivated Biology Teachers



Lack of Qualified and Motivated Biology Teachers


The success of any educational problem depends on the caliber of teachers. Lack of qualified and motivated biology teachers is a major impediment militating against the effective teaching of biology. The quality of a teacher determines to a large extent the students level of understanding, it is pertinent to know that the quality of a teacher is the most important educational input predicting students achievement.
Ajeyalemi (1990), opined that the students poor performance and lack of interest in science, particularly biology is as a result of lack of qualified and motivated biology teachers. If teachers from any other field are mandated to teach biology in schools, in such cases, then due to the abstract nature of biology the learners will not be able to benefit maximally from the lesson because the teacher is not professionally trained in the mandated field of study. Owing to the need for scientists and their accelerated influx in other sectors, teaching is generally seen as unlucrative profession,
compared with other learned professions – such as medicine, law, engineering, and architecture and so some teachers are dissatisfied and even depressed about their professional standing. They feel that the work load is too heavy, and the recognition and appreciation are too limited and as such the few available qualified biology teachers are not motivated, resulting from poor human resources policies, there is a net deficiency of capable hands to sciences and biology in particularly in secondary schools.

Again, the demand for teaching biology has been upgraded since there are new areas that are being explored day by day. So, the quality of biology teachers is a guest for intelligence and an up-to date fitness in the subject, plus the ability and will to teach, only a few of biology teachers meet this demand, where as the rest vast majority are not qualified. In the same vain a good number of biology teachers are not conversant with modern gadgets and information technology nor acquainted with the recent advancements that computer and other sophisticated gadgets avail biology. This automatically excludes many biology teachers from the confidence list of 21st century biology education for their lack of skills and latest applications of the principles of biology.
Imoh (2006) observed that lack of qualified teachers oblige some schools to engage the services of non-qualified persons to handle the skill intensive subject. This leaves the subject and the learners at the mercies of weaklings, who might claim to be the best even when they lack basic understanding of the subject, its philosophy and teaching.
Ukeje (1995) held that it is a national suicide for any nation to have its best brains as engineers, physicians, lawyers while its poorest brains teach its youths. He concluded that the cumulative effect is national crisis and non-development. This is exactly what is happening in our secondary schools today, the brains that are able to teach are not motivated to teach, where as those that are contented to teach are not qualified to teach.
In most of our secondary schools, the few available biology teachers and those who are able and willing to teach are overloaded with work which cumminates in diminishing returns and in many cases monopoly and undue exploitation of helpless knowledge seekers. This is why we hear of extra-moral classes, special practical classes, exam runs, special centres and their likes. These teachers having no one to checkmate their works, end up in many instance teaching their own ideas which is a shift from the provisions of the curriculum.
It is one thing to be able to teach, and another thing to be willing or motivated to do so. Teaching a delicate subject like biology require both qualification and motivation (in form of sponsorship to seminars, conferences, science fairs, courses and time –to time appraisal and promotion with an enhanced salary packages, enabling working environment and conditions, provisions of teaching facilities, infrastructure, interesting human resources policies, incentive, retirement/disengagement packages and job security)
Agunyegon (1980) noted that there exist relationship between teachers’ qualification and students performance. This points to the fact that the quality of a teachers’ teaching determines to a large extent the students’ level of understanding, therefore it is clear that teacher quality is the most important educational input predicting students’ achievement. It is a known fact that qualified, skillful biologist and biology educationist are not engaged to teach because they are not adequately mobilized or motivated, where as mere job seekers who are not fit to do the job but are cheaper to engage are hired especially in private schools. This makes a mess of the education system and the teaching and advancement of biology in particular in Nigerian Secondary Schools.
Every other agency, ministry, parastatals and government itself depends on the strength of education to function effectively in this country yet, the policy makers, politicians and stakeholders who are sitting on the circle of the wealth of this country, even though they are not as productive as teachers often make quick reference to the economic depression we are facing as their inability for not making adequate provision for the education sector and not motivating teachers to teach. The teachers, though professionals are constantly neglected as we see in their ridiculous salary scheme to start with.
This neglect is only a display of how myopic our leaders are about the root of the said economic depression, the disdain with which education and educationist have been treated over years. In reprisal attack against the nation for the protracted neglect of schools and teachers, our educational institutions now break our youths who in turn break the society, instead of building youths who would have built out nation.
The concern here is not to appropriate guilt on either government or teachers, nor to discern who is culpable, but to profer solutions to the mess we are already caught up in, biology teachers who are knowledgeable in the subject and are skillful to teach it, deserve attractive pay cheques and other fringe benefits to keep working, where as others who are misfit in the teaching field should pick up careers in other works of life. This country will fail when education fails and only rise when education rises.

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