Teachers’ Characteristics as Determinants of Their Attitude towards Continuous Assessment Practices

Opara Ijeoma M.^1,

¹Department of Educational Psychology, Guidance and Counselling, Faculty of Education, University of Port Harcourt, Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Cite this paper:
Opara Ijeoma M.. Teachers’ Characteristics as Determinants of Their Attitude towards Continuous Assessment Practices. American Journal of Educational Research. 2018; 6(10):1351-1355. doi: 10.12691/education-6-10-3

Abstract

The study investigated teachers’ characteristics as determinants of their attitude towards continuous assessment practices in Obio-Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State, Nigeria. Four research questions and four corresponding hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted an ex-post facto research design. A sample of 391 secondary school teachers was drawn from the population through proportionate stratified random sampling technique based on educational qualification, years of teaching experience and gender. An instrument titled Continuous Assessment Teacher’s Attitude Scale (CATAS) which was developed by the researcher was used for data collection. The CATAS was validated by experts in educational psychology, measurement and evaluation based on face and construct validities. The reliability of the instrument (CATAS) was established through Cronbach Alpha technique and the reliability coefficient obtained was 0.78. Data collected were analyzed using percentage, mean, standard deviation, chi-square, t-test of independent and one-way analysis of variance. The results revealed that proportion of teachers with positive and negative attitude respectively toward continuous assessment practices differ significantly in favour of those with positive attitude; educational qualification and years of teaching experience are good determinants of teachers’ attitude toward continuous assessment practices while genders is not. Based on these results, recommendations were made including that teachers with negative attitude toward continuous assessment practices should be enlightened more on the importance of continuous assessment in schools.

Keywords:
teachers qualification experience attitude and continuous assessment

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