Teachers’ qualification and secondary school physics students’ academic performance in Emohua Local Government Area, Rivers State

Abstract

This study investigated teachers’ qualifications and secondary school physics students' academic performance in Emohua Local Government Area of Rivers State. Three (3) research questions and two (2) hypotheses were formulated to guide this study. A descriptive analytical design was adopted. A purposive sampling technique was employed to use all six (6) Physics teachers in all the secondary schools while a simple random sampling technique was used to select 141 SS2 students offering physics. Checklists titled: “Physics Students’ Academic Performance Checklist (PSAPC)” and two questionnaires titled “Physics Teachers Qualification Questionnaire (PTQQ)” and “Students Interest Towards Physics Questionnaire (SIPQ)” were used for data collection. The analysis of the result was carried out using percentages, mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions while a t-test was used to test the hypotheses at a 0.05 level of significance. The results revealed that teacher qualification had a significant influence on students’ academic performance. It was also found that teacher qualification does not significantly influence students’ interest towards Physics. It was recommended among others that qualified physics teachers should always be employed to teach students.