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 (F 1, 71 = 17.74, p 0.05 and F 1, 35 = 1.29, p > 0.05 respectively). Original Research Article