THESIS PROPORSAL

FOR

PROFESSOR C.T AKINMADE

FACULTUY OF EDUCATION, SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION

UNIVERSITY OF JOS

TOPIC: HANDS ON ACTIVITIES IN TEACHING CHANGE IN NATURE AND ITS

IMPACT ON PERFORMANCE OF UPPER PRIMARY PUPILS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN

PLATEAU STATE

BY

Mark Metshak Toscanini

DECEMBER 28 2009
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

 BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM

 REASON FOR THE RESEARCH
 CONTRIBUTION
 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
 PROCEDURE
BACCKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM

Under a partnership between the department of technology and science education (DTSE) and
the Japan international cooperation agency (JICA), an in-service education training (INSET)
workshop was developed for upper primary school mathematics and science teachers in 2004.
The project was designed to start with a pilot phase with three (3) states, these states are
Kaduna, Niger and plateau states.

A baseline study to empirically determine the state of mathematics and science education in
the three states was conducted, the findings of the study was subsequently used to justify the
need for INSET

The results of the baseline survey carried out in the three states proposed as pilot sates are
presented below around the terms of reference that guided the study. During the survey twelve
(12) topics in mathematics and science were presented to both the teachers and pupils to
indicate the ones they find difficult to teach and learn respectively.

Table 1

On teacher pupil strategy for teaching and learning mathematics and science, four major
teaching strategies or methods, namely demonstration, lecture, group method and project
method were registered to be in use in teaching mathematics and science by the teachers in
the schools visited. Specifically 81% of the teachers use lecture method, 88.2% use
demonstration 91% delivered without giving room for learner’s active participation in class
room activities.

Table 2

The result of the survey showed that the difficulty encountered in the teaching and learning of
mathematics and science can be grouped into six groups

 Attitudinal factors
 Cognitive factors
 Socio economic factors
  Teaching/ learning resources and materials
 Pedagogy
 Lack of capacity building
 Administration and policy making

Interestingly the findings are in agreement with studies conducted more than two decades ago
(Baa and Ademelokun 1986)

Reasons for the research

As a result of the findings of the baseline survey, the INSET project pilot phase was launched in
2006 to run till 2008. The INSET training was carried out in three cycles, each cycle targeted at
achieving a specific theme

Currently, more than 500 hundred mathematics and science teachers have gone through the
three cycles of INSET and are in the field.

Contribution

The potential in terms of contribution of this research include the following

 Provide a frame work for organizing seminars and workshops on learner centered
approach of teaching for upper primary school teachers,
 Provide a basis for improvement of pre service training program for teachers,
 Determine the extent of effectiveness of the three cycles of INSET carried out in the
pilot states
 Throw more light on the reason for poor performance of upper primary pupils in
mathematics and science.