Path-Analytic Study of Class, Gender, Qualification, Subject Taught, Teacher-Student Relationship and Teacher Job Confidence

Abstract

Teacher is a central factor in any educational system and the job confidence of any teacher goes a long way to boost educational benefits obtained by learners. Investigating into variables that are related to job-confidence to provide empirical information for better educational planning will be worthy effort. Hence the study investigated “Path-Analytic Study of Class, Gender, Qualification, Subject taught, Teacher-Student relationship and Teacher Job Confidence” The study adopted a Descriptive survey research method using path-analytic approach.The population for the study comprises of all the teachers in public secondary schools in the five Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Ibadan metropolis in Oyo state, Nigeria. Stratified random sampling was used to select one hundred and fifty (150) teachers from each LGA making a total of seven hundred and fifty (750) teachers, teaching in all the six levels (JS1 to SS3) in secondary schools. The selection cut across various subjects being taught in the schools. Two validated instruments were used to gather information for this study. These are: Teacher – Student Relationship Inventory and Teacher Job Confidence Scale with estimated Cronbach reliability coefficients(rs) of 0.80 and 0.95 respectively. Twenty five research assistants were engaged to collect the data (5 per LGA). Data collection lasted one week. The data collected were analyzed by adopting Path analysis, using AMOS 18 software. Class taught and teacher-student relationship were found to be meaningful causal of teacher Job Confidence with beta weights (βs) 0.079 and 0.077 respectively. Effort should be directed to train teachers on the expected relationship in the classroom. Experienced teachers also should be deployed to lower classes too.