Influence of Teachers’ Belief on Competence for the Implementation of Environmental Education Curriculum

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine Influence of Teachers’ belief on competence for the implementation of environmental education curriculum in secondary schools in Calabar Education Zone of Cross River State, Nigeria. Ex-Post facto research design was adopted for the study. A sample of 417 respondents was randomly selected for the study through stratified and simple random sampling technique. The questionnaire with 0.78 reliability index was the instrument used for data collection. The Independent t- test was the statistical tools used to test the hypothesis formulated for the study at 0.05 significance level. The mean scores of 2.87, 2.84, 2.88, 3.05, 2.91, 2.72, 2.94, and 3.32 were obtained for items 1 to 8 respectively. The result of the analysis showed a cal-r to be .581 and the critical -r is .113 with df of 415. This revealed that there is a significant relationship between teachers’ belief and their competency in the implementation of Environmental Education curriculum. There is need to consider teachers beliefs as a critical factor in teachers professional development. What a teacher hold as a belief influences classroom practices and by extension, curriculum implementation. On a general note, knowledge of content of subject matter and pedagogical skills are hitherto the key emphasis on teachers competencies. This study showed that these important attributes can be significantly influenced by what the teacher holds as his belief. Teacher Education preparation programmes as well as in- service training programmes should aim at improving teachers belief on the need to promote environmental sustainability while improving on their knowledge based concept of EE and developing their competencies in the cross curricula implementation of Environmental Education curriculum.