Teacher Education and Effective Management of Senior Secondary Schools in Rivers State

The study examined the influence of teacher education in the effective management of senior secondary schools in Rivers State. Three research questions and three hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted the correlational survey design. The population of the study was 8,999 respondents which comprised 286 senior secondary schools principals and 6,813 teachers in senior secondary schools in Rivers State. The sample of the study was 378 respondents determined using Taro Yemen formula. The sample size of 378 respondents consisted 78 principals and 300 public senior secondary school teachers in Rivers State. A simple random sampling technique was used to select the required sample. The instrument for data collection was a questionnaire titled: Teacher Education Questionnaire (TEQ) and Effective Management of Senior Secondary School Questionnaire (EMSSQ). Face and content validity of the instrument was done by three experts, two from the Department of Educational Management, and other one from the department of Educational Psychology, Guidance and Counseling. The test-retest method was used to ascertain the reliability of the instrument of 0.75. The instrument was administered by the researcher and two research assistants to 20 respondents outside the sampled size. The Research questions were answered using the Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (PPMC), while the hypotheses were tested using multiple regression and associated t-test at 0.05 level of confidence. The result showed that teacher education had strong positive correlation with financial management, school discipline, and decision-making as aspects of effective management of senior secondary schools in Rivers State. It was also found that teacher education had significant relationship with and predicted effective management of senior secondary schools in Rivers States in financial management, school discipline, and decision-making. On account of these findings, it was recommended that among others that teachers should continually be exposed to professional development programmes to acquire more knowledge to become more effective on financial management, students’ discipline, and decision-making in senior secondary schools in Rivers State.