Accelerating Preservice Chemistry Teachers’ Teaching Effectiveness: Any Hope Using Mentoring Strategy?

Abstract

Aims: This study investigated the impact of teacher mentoring programme on the teaching effectiveness of preservice chemistry teachers with gender and age as moderating variables. Study Design: The study is a pretest, posttest quasi experimental type. Intact groups were therefore used. 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 were Teacher Mentoring Guide (TMG) and Teaching Practice Assessment Scale (TPAS). A purposive sample of 72 Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) final year chemistry teachers was used. The experimental group was mentored using TMG while the control group participated in the twelve-week teaching practice experience without an assigned mentor. Results: It was found that there was a significant difference between the mean teaching effectiveness score of preservice chemistry teachers exposed to mentoring and those that were not. However, there were no significant differences between the mean teaching effectiveness of males and females, nor were there distinctions between teaching effectiveness scores of preservice teachers by age group. Conclusion and Recommendations: Results allow speculations that mentoring of preservice chemistry teachers improved the participants’ teaching effectiveness. Thus, a teacher mentoring programme using a structured mentoring guide for preservice chemistry teachers (either in the school or while on teaching practice) is recommended. Future research could concentrate on the gender of the mentor with a view to determining if mentor gender impacts mentoring outcomes.