Effectiveness of a Teacher Mentoring Programme in Enhancing Pre-service Chemistry Teachers’ Attitude towards the Teaching Profession

Abstract

Aims: This study investigated the effectiveness of a teacher mentoring programme in enhancing pre-service teacher’s attitude towards the teaching profession. Study Design: The study was a pretest, post test quasi experimental design. Place and Duration of Study: The study took place in Plateau State of Nigeria and lasted for 12 weeks (that is, between April and June 2012). Methodology: The instruments used for the study were Teacher Mentoring Guide (TMG) and Pre-service Chemistry Teachers’ Attitude Scale (PCTAS). The reliability for PCTAS was 0.82 using Cronbach’s Alpha. A purposive sample of 72 Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) final year chemistry teachers was used in Experimental group by serving teachers using a TMG.  Result: PCTAS was used to generate data which were analysed using mean, standard deviation and ANCOVA. It was found that there was a significant difference between the mean attitude score of pre-service chemistry teachers exposed to mentoring (experimental) and those that were not (F1, 71 = 17.74, p< 0.05). Conversely, there were no significant differences between the mean attitude score of male and female as well as age category of 18-21 and 22 and above years’ pre-service chemistry teachers exposed to mentoring (F1, 35 = 0.11, p> 0.05 and F1, 35 = 1.29, p > 0.05 respectively). Conclusion: Training of pre-service chemistry teachers in teacher training institutions using a structured guide such as TMG facilitated development of positive attitude by pre-service teachers. Gender was not a factor in the extent of positive attitude developed by pre-service teachers mentored using TMG.