West African Journal of Open & Flexible Learning
Volume 7, Number 1, July 2018

Mentorship in Terms of Psychosocial Support and Teachers’ Job Performance in Public Secondary Schools in Cross River State, Nigeria

Le Tutorat En Termes De Soutien Psychosocial Et De Performance Professionnelle des Enseignants Dans Les Ecoles Secondaires Publiques De L'état De Cross River Au Nigeria

Bassey, Edwin O (Ph.D) ¹ and Otu, Bernard. D. (Ph.D)²

1. National Open University of Nigeria ebassey@noun.ed.ng
2. Department of Educational Foundations, University of Calabar

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to examine the influence of mentorship in terms of psychosocial support on teachers’ job performance in public secondary schools in Cross River State, Nigeria. To achieve the aim of this study, one hypothesis was formulated to guide the study. Literature was reviewed accordingly. Ex-post facto research design was adopted for the study. A sample of seven hundred and eleven teachers was used for the study. The participants were drawn through the stratified and simple random sampling techniques. The questionnaire was the instrument used for data collection. The instrument was subjected to face and experts’ validation. The experts are in Research and Statistics. The reliability estimate of the instrument was established through Cronbach alpha reliability method. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was adopted to test the study hypothesis. The hypothesis was tested at .05 level of significance. The result of the analysis revealed that mentorship in terms of psychosocial support has a significant influence on teachers’ job performance. Based on the results and findings of the study, it was recommended that mentorship should be adopted in schools so as to develop a good learning environment that can help the teachers acquired more skills on teaching.

Keywords: Mentorship, Psychosocial, Job Satisfaction

Résumé

L'objectif principal de cette étude est d'examiner l'influence du tutorat en termes de soutien psychosocial sur le rendement au travail des enseignants dans les écoles secondaires publiques de l'État de Cross River, au Nigéria. Pour atteindre l'objectif de cette étude, une hypothèse a été formulée pour guider l'étude. L’état des lieux a été fait en conséquence. La conception de la recherche ex-post facto a été adoptée pour l'étude. Un échantillon de sept cent onze enseignants a été utilisé pour l'étude. Les participants ont été tirés par les techniques d'échantillonnage aléatoire stratifié et simple. Le questionnaire est l'instrument utilisé pour la collecte de données. L'instrument a été soumis à la validation des experts. Les experts sont en recherche et en statistique. L'estimation de fiabilité de l'instrument a été établie par la méthode de fiabilité alpha de Cronbach. L'analyse à sens unique de la variance (ANOVA) a été adoptée pour tester l'hypothèse de l'étude. L'hypothèse a été testée à un niveau d'importance de 0,05. Le résultat de l'analyse a révélé que le tutorat t en matière de soutien psychosocial a une influence importante sur le rendement au travail des enseignants. Sur la base des résultats et des résultats de l'étude, il a été recommandé d'adopter le tutorat dans les écoles afin de développer un bon environnement d'apprentissage qui puisse aider les enseignants à acquérir plus de compétences en enseignement.

Mots-clés : tutorat, Psychosocial, Professionnelle

Introduction

The goal of education is to develop individuals that would become functional members of the society. The onus lies on the teacher to ensure the objectives of education are achieved. The goals of primary education as stated in the National Policy on Education (2013) section 4(18) includes permanent literacy and numeracy and the ability to communicate effectively.

The researcher’s personal interactions with some public secondary schools’ students reveal that most of these students are not able to read their school text and other school literatures such as storybooks and picture charts. Some pupils do find it difficult to express themselves in English Language which is the medium of communication. This trend of poor performance amongst public secondary schools’ students has been a source of concern to parents, guardian, educationists and the society at large. Teachers are usually the culprit when learners have not done well according to societal expectations. The society expects that students in secondary schools should be able to read and write and express themselves clearly in English language. (Anero, 2012)

From the foregoing, research has been conducted to find out the underlying factors that are responsible for effective job performance of teachers. There is still the need for a continuous search on ways to improve teachers’ job performance. Performance of teachers have been accepted as a multi-dimensional construct since it measures a variety of different aspects of teaching such as; subject mastery, effective communication, lesson preparation. Teachers’ job performance can also be viewed in terms of classroom management practices and lesson preparation. When a teacher possesses inadequate knowledge of subject matter or conceives knowledge in narrow ways, he/she may pass these ideas to his/her students and fail to challenge the misconceptions the child brought into the class. The inability of the teacher to deliver the lesson effectively to the students also poses a challenge. The view that teachers constantly need to improve on these aspects of their job has led the government to search for new ways to improve teachers’ job performance.

Government has made several efforts in the past to improve the performance of teachers in public secondary schools in Nigeria. One of such effort made by the government was to raise the minimum teaching qualification of teachers in primary schools from Teachers’ Grade 11 certificate to National certificate in Education (NCE). The Government has also introduced the National Teachers’ Institute to enhance teachers’ job performance.

Some variables or factors are capable of influencing job performance of teachers in public secondary schools. Such variables are mentorship (in terms of psychosocial support). Mentorship is the personal guidance teachers receive from other veterans in the profession. Anero (2012) stated that Cross River State Government within 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 academic sessions adopted teacher mentorship program for both the pre-primary and primary school teachers to improve the job performance of teachers. Supervision is a collective process which is directed at improving teaching and learning. The goal of supervision therefore is to achieve improvement in the teaching and learning process. It helps to identify areas of strength and weakness of teachers and learners that should be improved (Segiovanni & Starrat, 2012).

It is against this background that the researchers seek to ascertain the extent to which mentorship have influenced teachers’ job performance in terms of knowledge of subject matter, classroom management, communication skills and lesson presentation. The researchers would want to find out the interactive effect of mentorship, workshop attendance, and supervision on teachers’ job performance.

Literature Review

The term mentoring can be viewed differently by individuals. Some persons may view individuals who have had a positive impact on their lives, for instance a boss, a teacher or a coach as a mentor. The term ‘mentoring’ was derived from a tale about Mentor, the friend of Ulysses who was entrusted with the care of Ulysses son before he embarked on epic voyages. Mentoring is the process of facilitating the development of a fellow who is relatively new by another who is comparably more knowledgeable and experienced through mutual trust and sharing. The concept of mentoring in educational settings has rapidly increased in use as a vehicle to reforming teaching and teacher education since 1980s with the hope that experienced teachers would not only model but also help novice learn new pedagogies besides socializing professionally.

Alfaki (2014) stated that mentorship helps the teachers to self-evaluate their own ability through the process of reflection. O’Mahony and Mathews (2005) defined mentorship as a personal enhancement strategy through which one person facilitates the development of another by sharing skills, expertise, values and knowledge. Teacher mentoring programs are now perceived as an effective staff development approach for beginning teachers. By establishing teacher mentoring programme, it serves two important purposes; novice teachers are given a strong start at the beginning of their careers, and experienced classroom teachers serving as mentors receive recognition and incentives. In education, mentoring is a complex and multi-dimensional process of guiding, teaching, influencing and supporting a beginning or new teacher. It is generally accepted that a mentor teacher leads, guides, and advises another teacher more junior in experience in a work situation characterized by mutual trust and belief. Ehrich (n.d) opined that mentorship is a process of rendering support and guidance to colleagues as they carry out their daily activities. Enrich (n.d) further stated that mentorship can be used as a veritable tool to improve the performance of teachers. Ehrich (n.d) defines mentorship as a personal helping relationship between a mentor and direct mentee that includes professional development and growth and varying degrees of support.

Hansford (2003) on the other hand views mentorship as not only being concerned about the performance of the person but the individual’s overall life development. Asuru (2014) opined that mentorship is a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide.

Okurame (2008) carried out a study in a public Nigerian University using 48 members of academic staff of the University. The study aimed at enhancing the skills of the academic staff through mentoring programmes. A purposive sampling method was used to select the respondents that have at least 4 years of teaching experience. The result showed that mentoring is a crucial important component that has helped in developing academics; however, they varied in their opinions of how the mentoring process should be carried out. The findings revealed that members were active participants in the informal type of mentoring relationship. One of the limitations of the study is the small sample size.

Anero (2012) carried out an investigation on the perception of mentorship by graduate and non-graduate primary and pre-primary school teachers in Rivers State. The population for the study was 8577. Out of the number 3690 were graduate teachers and 4887 were non-graduate teachers. He used simple random sampling technique in selecting the 843 graduates and non- graduate teachers for the study. The instrument, a questionnaire was used in gathering data for the study. The findings of study revealed that the implementation level of teacher mentorship in the primary school was not significant and also the impact of mentorship on graduate and non- graduate preprimary/primary school teachers did not differ significantly. Based on the finding of the study, it was recommended that the government should review the teacher mentorship scheme.

Lyne (2013) carried out another study to determine the effect of teachers mentoring programme in improving teachers’ self-efficacy in Malaysian primary schools. He drew 21 Malaysian teachers through a purposive sampling technique that was adopted for the study. The results established that there was a mean gain from the pre-intervention achievement to post-achievement. The findings also showed that there was a difference between Malay and Chinese Malaysians self-efficacy scores on post-intervention. However, the study had no control group and the researcher admitted that respondents could not be observed at the same time because the respondents were spread over 5 schools.

Deruage (2007) carried out an investigation on Beginning Primary Teachers induction and mentoring practices in Pupua New Guinea. The study was a qualitative research and interview was used as the instrument for data collection for answering the research questions. The sample size for the study was 15 comprising of 10 teachers’ and 5 mentors from 2 schools.

Sayeski and Paulsen (2012) set out to investigate student teachers’ evaluations of cooperating teachers as indices of effective mentoring. The study was a qualitative study. The authors used 400 student teachers for the study. The participants responded to the open ended qualitative evaluation questionnaire. Content analysis was used to analyze data. The findings revealed that the student teachers desire advance planning, sharing of resources, and provision of specific feedback and demonstrate the practice of trust and confidence in order to facilitate mentoring.

Furthermore, Vanderbilt (2010) carried out a study in Florida School District. The purpose of the study was to identify the career and psychosocial functions of mentors in the schools between (2008 – 2009). The design for the school study was a comparative design. The population of the study was made up of 300 mentors and 402 teachers in Florida Districts. The populations of the study were matched paired. They included the mentoring functions scale for mentor and mentoring function scale for protégé. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. An independent t-test was used to analyze the study’s variable based on a sample size of 108 mentor teachers and 108 protégé teachers were used for the study. The findings revealed that both mentor and protégé teachers value mentoring process. The findings revealed that career and psychosocial functions were provided in schools in Florida. However, the study did not indicate the extent to which the findings of the study have enabled the teachers to carry out their duties in the classroom.

To discover the outcome of mentoring, Hansford, Tennet and Enrich (2003) examined and coded 159 pieces of research on mentoring in educational settings to determine the benefits and the shortcomings for the mentee, mentor and the organization. Out of the 159 research papers Hansford et al analyzed, only 26 papers (16.4%) of the sample alluded to positive outcomes for the organization. Most research that examines mentoring tends to look at its benefit from the point of view of the two main parties involves the mentee and the mentor. The most frequently cited outcome according to the Hansford et al (2003) regarding benefits for the organization was improved grades, and this was evident in universities where students’ grades were seen to improve if they were part of a formal mentoring programme. Other benefits include support funds received for mentoring pre-service teachings, less work for staff because mentees provide assistance, increased retention of staff and better communication between the mentor and mentee.

Methodology

The research design for the study was ex-post facto. The design, ex-post facto was suitable because inferences about the variables would be made without manipulation of the independent variables to produce an effect on the dependent variable. Cross River State is the research area for the study. The target population of the study is all teachers in public secondary schools in Cross River State. There are a total number of 7338 teachers in 898 public secondary schools in Cross River State as recorded by Cross River State Universal Education Board (2014). The researchers employed different sampling techniques for the study. Firstly, the researcher adopted a stratified random sampling technique. In using the stratified random sampling technique, the researcher stratified the schools into different education zones. The researchers used a simple random technique to select 5% of the schools in each zone. This was done through the process of balloting. The sample size for the study is 366 teachers and 1444 students representing 5% of the entire population of teachers and students in public secondary schools in Cross River State. The 5% of the entire population of teachers and students was considered appropriate because the number is large enough to generalize the findings of the study. The instrument that was used is Mentorship and Teacher Job Performance Questionnaire (MTPQ). Copies of the questionnaire were face validated by three research experts in University of Calabar. To establish the reliability of the instrument, a trial testing was done using fifty (50) teachers’ who were not included in the real study. The data generated was analyzed to establish its internal consistency using the Cronbach Alpha Coefficient Method. The result showed that the reliability estimates of the sub-scales ranged from 0.71 to 0.88.

Hypothesis for the study

There is no significant influence of mentorship in terms psychosocial support on teachers’ job performance in terms of (knowledge of subject matter, communication skills, classroom management and lesson presentation).

Independent variable: Mentorship in terms of psychosocial support (high, moderate and low.

Presentation of results

Hypothesis one

There is no significant influence of mentorship in terms psychosocial support on teachers’ job performance.

The independent variable was mentorship in terms of psychosocial support with three categories (low, moderate and high). The dependent variable in this hypothesis is teachers’ job performance with four dimensions, namely knowledge of subject matter, communication skills, Classroom management and lesson presentation. The scores obtained from the respondents were split into the three categories of psychosocial support. The highest score a respondent was expected to have is 24, lowest 6 and the average score was 12. Any respondent that scored 11 and below was below the average and was considered to be low, between 12 and 18 scores was within the average and were seen as moderate while those with the score of 19 and above were above the average and these were considered to be high.

To test this hypothesis, each of the three categories of mentorship in terms psychosocial support was compared with the four dimensions of teachers’ job performance using One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results of this analysis are presented in Tables 1 and 2.

Table 1

Group Means and Standard Deviation of the Variables Mentorship in Terms Psychosocial Support on Teachers’ Job Performance

Teachers’ Job Performance	Mentorship in Terms Psychosocial Support	N	X̅	SD
Knowledge of subject matter	Low	141	19.02	1.43
	Moderate	333	22.29	0.45
	High	237	24.00	0.00
	Total	711	22.21	1.89
Communication skills	Low	141	22.33	0.47
	Moderate	333	22.28	1.03
	High	237	21.39	2.35
	Total	711	21.99	1.60
Classroom management	Low	141	18.01	2.96
	Moderate	333	18.41	2.33
	High	237	18.59	4.06
	Total	711	18.39	3.13
Lesson presentation	Low	141	22.34	0.48
	Moderate	333	22.43	1.04
	High	237	21.39	1.76
	Total	711	22.06	1.35

Table 2

One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) of the Influence of Mentorship in Terms Psychosocial Support on Teachers’ Job Performance (N=711)

Teachers’ Job Performance	Source of variation	Ss	df	MS	F	Sig. of f.
Knowledge of subject matter	Between groups	2194.941	2	1097.47	2202.194*	0
	Within group	352.834	708	0.498
	Total	2547.775	710
Communication skills	Between groups	127.868	2	63.934	26.910*	0
	Within group	1682.082	708	2.376
	Total	1809.949	710
Classroom management	Between groups	29.217	2	14.609	1.495*	0
	Within group	6918.085	708	9.771
	Total	6947.302	710
Lesson presentation	Between groups	161.411	2	80.705	50.763*	0
	Within group	1125.613	708	1.59
	Total	1287.024	710

* Significant at .05 level, critical f=3.00, df=2,708

The results of the analysis revealed that the calculated F-value for Knowledge of subject matter 2202.194, Communication skills 26.910, Classroom management 1.495 and Lesson presentation 50.763 are each higher than the critical F-value of 3.00, at .05 level of significance at 2 and 708 degrees of freedom. With these results, the null hypothesis is rejected at .05 level of significance. This implies that mentorship in terms of psychosocial support significantly influence teachers’ job performance in terms of the four dimensions, namely knowledge of subject matter, communication skills, classroom management and Lesson presentation. The direction of this influence was examined using the Fishers’ Least significance difference (LSD) multiple comparison analysis. The result of the analysis is presented in Table 3.

The results of the post Hoc test in Table 3 shows that teachers whose mentorship in terms of psychosocial support is low, are significantly different in their knowledge of subject matter from those moderates and high mentorship in terms psychosocial support. Also teachers who are moderate are significantly different from those who are high in respects to the dimensions of their teachers’ job performance.

In terms of communication skills, the result of Post Hoc shows that, teachers whose mentorship in terms psychosocial support are low, are significantly different in their communication skills than those whose mentorship in terms of psychosocial support is moderate and high respectively. Also teachers whose moderates are significantly different in their Communication skills, on teachers’ job performance from those that are high.

For Classroom management teachers whose mentorship in terms psychosocial support is low significantly different in their classroom management from those whose mentorship in terms psychosocial support is moderate and high respectively. Also teachers whose mentorship in terms psychosocial support is moderate are significantly different than those that is high.

For Lesson presentation teachers whose mentorship in terms psychosocial support is low significantly different in their Classroom management from those whose mentorship in terms of psychosocial support is moderate and high respectively. Also teachers whose mentorship in terms psychosocial support is moderate are significantly different than those whose mentorship in terms psychosocial support is high.

Discussion of Findings

The result of the study revealed that teachers’ job performance in terms of knowledge of subject matter, communication skills, classroom management and lesson presentation in public secondary schools is significantly high. The result is in line with the view of Alfaki (2014) who observed that mentorship helps the teachers to self-evaluate their own ability through the process of reflection. Mentorship is not only being concerned about the performance of the person but the individuals’ overall life development. Mentorship is a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide. The professional support given to teachers enhances teacher’s job performance in the classroom. The professional support received ranges from joint planning of lessons, improved pedagogy and subject matter and assessment of student units.

In another developing format, Hargreaves and Fullam (2000) also ascertained that if mentorship is not properly conceptualized as a process of enhancing teachers’ job performance, the objective of mentorship would not be achieved. Mentorship is all about sharing expertise and knowledge needed by other individuals in any given system. The term mentorship is the development of a personal relationship between teachers that have different professional skills and experience for the professional instruction and guidance of less experienced. Teachers need constant professional support to enable them performs their duty efficiently. The goal of mentorship according to Lindgren is to gain increased knowledge about the teacher role and effective method. To ensure that this goal is achieved the needs of the teachers should be clarified, questions should be raised about classroom interactions during the discussions. The professional support given to teachers should be objective, the teachers should be prepared to expect, and receive constructive criticism, and also the teachers should be made to reflect deeply on their lessons.

Conclusion/ Recommendations

Based on results of the study, it was concluded that mentorship in terms psychosocial support significantly influence teachers’ job performance in secondary schools. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that mentorship should be adopted in school so as to develop a good learning environment that can help the teachers acquire more skills on teaching. The professional support given to teachers should be objective, the teachers should be prepared to expect, and receive constructive criticism, and also the teachers should be made to reflect deeply on their lessons. The mentor should develop a cordial relationship with student teachers to ensure effective collaboration.

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