Volume 4 Issue 3 (October 2012) - Ozean Publications

European Journal of Educational Studies 4(3), 2012
large proportions of primary school teachers lack adequate academic qualifications, training and
mastering of content in developing countries. In fact more than 20% of primary school teachers lack
training in more than half the countries in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA), while many others need to have
their skills upgraded or require additional training to enhance their career. Apart from Tanzania,
Uganda, Mauritius, Gabon, Coted’lvoire with 100% trained teachers, several other countries have
less than 70% trained teachers in primary education (p. 2).
Beyond Africa, it is also practiced. O’dotherty and Deegan (2009) explained that Irish mentors involved in
mentoring novice teachers perceived the need for mentoring the novice teachers. They further explained that
they gained personally from the mentoring process and recognized its potential to be a transformative agent
within Irish schools.
Giving more credit to the practice, Nwosu (2002) examined different strategies of teacher development
programmes world wide and pointed out that Florida teacher education model emphasized individualized
instruction just like the mentoring approach practiced in 2009/2010 academic session in Rivers State. The
Florida educational programme like the Rivers State mentoring strategy provides for individual counseling,
micro-teaching, one to one tutorial experiences and clinical teaching involvement. At this point therefore, the
issue at stake is if the teacher mentorship programme that was adopted in Rivers State made significant impact
on both the graduate and non-graduate teachers in Rivers State just like it was in the case of Florida and Iland.
METHODOLOGY
Simple random sampling technique was adopted in selecting 843 graduate and non-graduate teachers for the
study. The population of the study was 8577. Out of the 8577 teachers 3690 were graduate teachers while the
non– graduate teachers number 4887. The 8,577 teachers were found in 868 pre-primary and primary schools in
River State (Rivers State Universal Education Board, 2010).
In adopting the simple random sampling technique for the study, the list of 868 schools was obtained from the
Rivers State Universal Basic Education Board. After obtaining the list the researcher adopted balloting-withreplacement
to select 10% of the schools. Through the balloting-with-replacement method, 86 schools were
selected for the study. In carrying out the balloting-with-replacement, the researcher wrote the names of the 868
schools on slips of papers and put them into a bag. Thereafter he started picking the paper by dipping his hand
into the bag until 86 different schools were picked. But in some occasions where he picked an already picked
school, he threw it back into the bag and thoroughly mixed the slips of papers and picked for the second time.
On arriving at each of the 86 selected schools, the researcher adopted the simple random sampling technique to
select the teachers for the study. To ensure that 10% of the graduate and non-graduate teachers were
respectively selected for the study the researcher in each of the 86 schools sampled 4 graduate and 6 nongraduate
teachers. But in cases where the graduate teachers were not up to 4 or not up to 6 in the case of nongraduate
teachers in the sampled schools the researcher noted the shortage and on reaching the next school, he
made up for the shortage that was experienced in the previous school. In all 860 teachers were sampled. Out of
the 860 teachers 370 were graduates while 490 were non-graduate representing 10.01% of the total number of
the teachers in the state. Out of the 860 teachers sampled for the study, 17 of them did not correctly fill the
questionnaire, so the analysis was based on 843 that correctly filled their questionnaire. Among the 843
respondents whose responses were used for the study, 361 were graduate teachers while 482 were non-graduate
teachers.
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