Teacher’s Characteristics and Academic Performance of Biology Students in Secondary Schools in Calabar Municipality of Cross River State.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of teachers’ characteristics (qualification, years of teaching experience and attitude) and students’ academic performance of Biology in secondary schools in Calabar Municipality of Cross River State, Nigeria. A survey research design was used. And two instruments were used for data collections. Questionnaires and Biology Achievement Test (BAT). Simple random sampling was used to select one hundred and fifty SS2 Biology students and five teachers. Data collected were analyzed using One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The researcher posited three null hypotheses (two were tested at 0.05 level of significance). The result revealed that teachers’ qualification and teachers’ years of teaching experience inextricably has a significant influence on students’ academic performance in Biology, while teachers’ attitude did not influence students’ academic performance. Based on these findings, the researcher recommended that Government should put in place measure and incentives to encourage and motivate experience teachers in the school system and students should learn to be studious not relying on only for their academic performance.